What I Can't Say to My Mother After Spending a Day with Her in NYC

It begins when she pushes through the front door of my sister's suburban New York apartment.

Despite the fact that she and my grandmother will only be in town for a few hours, she lugs a heavy bag inside.  And of course, she leaves my frail 83-year-old in-remission-from-metastasized-to-her-shoulder-from-her-no-longer-existent-breasts-cancer grandma to deal with the heavy, sticky door.

My mother's shorts are too short, and her tank top is too tight.  Her thick black bra straps stretch across her exposed back like freshly paved roads through cattle-grazing lands.  In my kinder moments, I liken her jiggly, cellulite-dimpled thighs and ballooned out arms to those of an elephant because I think elephants are beautiful and wise.  In my less forgiving moments, I see a woman in denial about her mortality, and I judge her for it.

When she sits down on the couch and busts out her computer to check her email while my sister makes smoothies for all of us and proceeds to loudly exclaim over and over again that she can't log on, but doesn't seem to hear us when we say we'll help her with the password in just a minute, I think she's an impatient child.

When she snarls at my grandma for forgetting which water glass is hers, I see her as insensitive.

When she answers a phone call from her verbally abusive, deep-into-his-alcoholism boyfriend and proceeds to sit next to me on the couch and talk at the decibel level of a jet taking off as I quietly read, I escape down the hallway and hide in my sister's room because I hate how my mom's loud talking is just a bid for attention--she wants us to know that she has a man's approval.  She wants to feel loved and popular, and she wants us to know it so that we will then see her as worthy of love too.  But the judgmental bitch in me just thinks she's pathetic.

It's time to go, and Mom says we need to stop at the car to grab Grandma's hat.  In the interest of time, Mel offers one of her own, but Mom just yells, "Let's go!  We'll stop by the car."  On the elevator ride down, she remembers she's forgotten her keys in the apartment.  "Oh, well," Mom says, "I'll just buy a hat for Grandma when we get to the city."  (She doesn't wind up getting a hat, but she does buy herself an expensive book about olives.)

My mother charges ahead of us as Mel and I take Grandma's extended hands to help her balance over the bumpy, broken sidewalk that leads to the train station.  When she reaches a corner, she jams her fingers into the crosswalk button so hard and so frequently that I say something despite my intentions to be on my best behavior.  "It's not like it's going to change any faster that way."  And I immediately feel like a self-righteous bitch and my comment doesn't get her to stop pushing the button or smirking at me as she does it.

At the station, time is short.  We have to buy tickets from the machines before we can board, and Mel calls out to Mom, who is fifty feet ahead of us, "The machines are in the brick building!"  But my mother is losing her hearing or has just never been able to hear her daughters and fifteen seconds later turns around with a frustrated look on her face and demands to know where the machines are.  I am surprised my sister does not lose her shit but only because I'm projecting because I want to lose my shit and say, "Why do you always have to sound pissed off, like we're all holding out on you?"

On the train, she leans across my grandmother and into the aisle separating us and talks so loudly about her job all the other passengers shift uncomfortably in their seats.  Some avert their eyes.  Others stare at me as if they know I'm the only one who can stop her.  I sit in my seat and nod at my mother and try to remember that I have her brown eyes, that I am part of her.

When we arrive at Grand Central Station, we have to walk down a series of winding halls filled with people who are of the "when push comes to shove" mindset.  My grandmother is the only gray-haired person in the throng, and I worry that she will be trampled.  For some reason, she worries that I will get lost, and she keeps looking back when I fall behind to act as a barrier between her and the people who seem to have fires to get to.  Finally, I succumb to my grandmother's concerns and take her free hand so that she is once again between my sister and me.  Eventually, Grandma needs a breather, and we pull off to the side to give her a break.  When Mom turns around fifty feet ahead to find herself alone, she flinches and then hardens and charges at us, "Come on," she orders.  "We're almost there."  

We have to take another subway afterwards to reach our final destination, and the trip has taken longer than Mel anticipated.  Since she is our guide for the day, she is the one who bears the brunt of my mother's unhappiness.  "We should have taken a cab," Mom says, not in a laughing familiar way but in a Cinderella's stepmother way that kicks my codependency into high gear; I wonder how my sister feels inside, if she feels stupid or like our mother's lack of love is somehow her fault.  I tell my sister that we couldn't know it would take so long and that it's fine, that it's no big deal.  Because it isn't and I don't want my sister to think I'm concerned that we've "wasted" time.  

We find a restaurant at Chelsea Market and are put on the waiting list.  Mom tries to force a menu into my hand but I don't want to feel rushed and refuse it.  She tells me she's buying and that I should pick something.  I shake my head and Grandma sits down at a table that is not ours, and my sister and I smile at each other, not in a mean way but in a way that says Life Is Funny.  A host with twinkling blue eyes tries not to laugh and takes us to a bench to wait.  I can't stand the thought of sitting next to my ear-crushing, says-nothing mother in such a claustrophobic space and excuse myself to do the rest of the wait time outside the restaurant.  I feel bad leaving my sister with them, but I also don't realize until she comes out a few minutes later that she is suffering as much as I am.  She's so good at playing the patience card.

When we finish eating, Mom does not renew her offer to pay.  My sister throws down more money than she should, and I throw down a little less than I should because we're using cash and I don't have the right bills, and then on our way out of the market we stop someone to take a picture of us.  We gather together like a family, looping arms around each other's shoulders and waists, smiling for the camera.  We thank the guy and when he walks away, my mom looks at the picture she took of Grandma, Mel, and me and compares it to the one the stranger just snapped and declares that his picture is terrible.  We turn towards the wishing well behind us and dig in our purses for pennies.  I wish God could help me stop being a bitch to my mother.

When we get outside, my sister grabs us a cab.  We scoot in, and I revel in the cabbie's smiling eyes, his silence, how his quiet energy somehow gets my mother in the front seat to shut up.  We arrive at Grand Central Station about $11.00 later and my mom, who does not live in the overpriced suburbs of New York and who makes something like $80,000 a year, does not offer to pay so my sister grabs her credit card and tells us all we can just give her our unused metro cards as repayment.  I am glad she has made this request.

Even getting onto the train back to my sister's apartment is a trial.  Mom wants to dive into the first train car she sees, but Mel wants to find one that is less crowded.  Wanting to get away from people, I follow Mel until she dives into a car after Mom impatiently pulls Grandma into the train.  I walk to the next car up and think about how wonderful the forty minute ride back will be.  Then I see Mel coming towards my car, and I motion to her.  She sits next to me.  We heave a collective sigh and begin to exchange thoughts about the day but are cut off a minute in when Mom appears in the doorway separating her car from ours.  "There's plenty of room in our car," Mom booms.  "I'm not moving," I say, resolute.   "We don't know where we're supposed to get off!" Mom shouts, and Mel tells her to calm down, that we're getting off where she lives, that it'll be announced.  That seems to mollify Mom, and she swivels on her heel to return to her car, and I think we are free.  But she comes back a minute later pulling Grandma behind her.  They sit in front of us, and Mel closes her eyes and I pull out my phone, and the train goes.

Back at Mel's apartment, Mom takes her time packing up her bag.  I hide in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet much longer than is necessary or sanitary.  Finally, I hear her calling my name.  I return to the living room and am relieved to see they are ready to go.  I carefully hug Grandma and can hear the tinny buzz of her hearing aid as our cheeks rub.  I tell her I will see her again "next time."  Then I plunge into my mother's arms like a body into cold water, backing out just as quickly as I entered.  "Drive safe, you guys," I say, and I mean it, but my loving tone is more about them leaving than it is about their safety.

My Mom, having complained about the weight of her bag, asks my sister to carry it for her.  I tell them there's no reason for me to leave the apartment, and I park myself on the couch as my mom pouts about me not escorting them down to the street.  "Have fun camping," I say, knowing that my mom's next destination is her alcoholic boyfriend's arms in Massachusetts.  I hope my grandma is taken care of.

When my sister returns to the apartment, she heads to her bedroom for a nap, and I head to the couch to figure out why I resent my mother so much, but I already know the answer.

It's mainly because I can't let go of the past, of how unlike the mother I wanted her to be she was.  But it's also because, of course, I see myself in her, and that scares me.  There she is at the corner, impatiently crushing the button like how I angrily thrust my fingers into technology's parts when I am tired and edgy, like how I think to myself, "Come on, come on already!" when I'm stuck behind a group of slow-walkers on campus and I'm running late.  There she is with her tiny shorts, and I think of my own microscopic shorts, of an ex-girlfriend telling me how slutty they are so that every time I wear short shorts now, I think not just of how comfortable and cool they keep me but of how trashy I might look, so that I constantly tug them down when I walk.  

I think of my mother's soft arms and legs, her marshmallow neck and fleshy face, and I am ashamed for seeing her as anything less than the woman who sacrificed her body to bring me into this world.  I hate how she has let herself go because some part of me wants to eat 1,000 calorie meals all day long for years at a time, climb into my microscopic shorts, and not give a shit.  Some part of me worries that one day I will lose the drive to maintain this body and I will become a 56-year-old woman who wears skimpy clothes and talks too loudly to draw attention to make it seem like I'm confident when in fact I'm terrified that no one will notice me.

I think of the times I've said I will do something and then reneged, sometimes without acknowledgment or apology.  When I think of my mother paying my cell phone bill every month, I flush with shame that I hold her accountable for saying she'll pay for something and then not doing it; I am guilty when I expect her to do something like pay a cab fair just because she makes more money than I do.

I am the mean girl my mother probably always wanted as a friend in school.  I am the girl who does not  want to sit with her on the train and who eats with her not because she wants to but because she feels some kind of pity which is actually just judgment.  I am the girl who gets upset when the woman she most does not want to be like points out that they are wearing similar outfits.

I do not like seeing my mom because she reminds me that I am capable of being just as selfish and oblivious as she often is.  And it is difficult to be with her because sometimes she is so generous, and I do not hesitate to take what she offers though I have betrayed her, over and over again.

There are things my mother does and did today that I make smaller so that I will not have to see her as human and take on the feelings that are mine to own.  

When she saw me today, she asked me how my classes are going, and when I told her about the website I designed, she asked to see it, and she was actually sincerely interested.  

My grandma is losing her memory and requires a lot of care.  My mother is her primary caretaker.  My grandma can ask you the same question five times in the span of ten minutes.  She has also been known to make herself more a victim than she actually is.  I remember when I was a kid how Grandma would make me fetch her a cup of water from the kitchen ten feet away from the couch where she sat watching TV.  She was in her young 60's and perfectly capable of getting the water herself.  I must remember that my grandma is my mother's mother, that they have unspoken history between them, that just because someone is old does not make them a different person, that my mother must have thrown some part of herself under the bus to watch her mother, who from what I can tell may have been just as deficient at mothering as my own mother.  There were many moments today when my mom took my grandma's hand as they stepped up or off a curb.  There was an instant on the train when Mel suggested we stand to prepare to deboard, but Mom said the train was still moving and that it would be best if Grandma remained seated for the jarring stop.  There were minutes today when I fell behind them as my mom linked arms with my grandma, and I saw how we can be kind to each other, even when we try each other's patience, even when no one has apologized for the past.

At lunch, I stopped staring at the sagging flesh of my mother's arms and forced my eyes to her face and saw the light in her eyes, how beautiful she was when she was younger, how vibrant she still is.  How our cheekbones share a shape, how our eyebrows match in arch, how our eyes are the same shade of brown.

As she wrapped her arms around me just before she left, she wondered aloud when she'd see me again, and I knew this was her passive way of asking if I'd come home for Christmas, but I'd decided earlier in the day that since I could not endure even a few hours with her that it would not be wise for me to go home for the holidays.  I said I wasn't sure, we'd have to see.  And after they drove away and Mel returned to the apartment, she told me Mom had asked her at the car if she (Mel) was coming home for Christmas, probably because she already knew by my vague answer that I wasn't, and my sister intimated that she was not.  

My mother is a child with a broken heart.  I am convinced she is the loneliest person on the planet, lonelier even than the guy on the bench at the train station this afternoon who lamented in a muttering voice that nobody cared about him, that he was nobody.  My mother wants to be liked, appreciated, and loved.  She wants this so badly, like a kid who wants something just out of reach at the toy store, that she makes a mess of everything trying to get it.  And though I tell her I love her, we both know there's nothing in it; my words are an empty box.  And I could say I want to love my mother, but I know that's not true because loving her would be easy.  All I'd have to do is forgive her for being human, for breaking my heart, and I'd be so full of love for her, I wouldn't know what to do.  But for now, I am my mother's daughter, just as closed off from her as she is from me.  Maybe one day I'll be able to forgive her as I have forgiven my father, and we'll sit together on a train, my hand on the soft arm that held me when I was a baby, her brown eyes on mine, our laughter echoing through the car.