It’s So My Mom.

Some people may think this blog is cruel. They might see the pictures of my mom’s head on various and sundry things, and think “My God, what a bitch.” Really though, it’s not mean spirited.

It’s funny. Isn’t it?

Okay. That’s not completely true.

There’s something else at work here. I’m obsessed with my mom.

She’s everything that’s made me who I am. She made me work hard, develop my writing, and get good grades. She taught me humility. (The threats “not to come home” if I lost my school sweater again didn’t really help me become a better steward of my belongings, though. I might have one hubcap left on my car.)

She was a writer, too. But she second-guessed herself too much, and got caught up caring for others. At least, that’s how a self-absorbed twentysomething sees it.

When I graduated college, I couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I didn’t want to live with my mother’s ironclad rules. I didn’t want to deal with her daily outbursts. I didn’t want to witness her terrorizing my poor, hard-working dad.

And then I got out. And here I am, 1,100 miles away and living in sin, empathizing more and more with her each day, despite the fact that my dad will call desperate for “help! she’s crazier than ever.” I used to rush to his aide. Now my thoughts turn immediately to her

I will never forget the last-few-visits-ago’s farewell. She came to the car to bid me goodbye, straight black hair in a pony, makeup half-worn, in a junior tee that could have been on a teenager. Her skinny little arms hung there and her shoulders slumped as she began to tear up because her crowning achievement, her self-definition, was leaving again, under circumstances of which she couldn’t approve. She wasn’t just my mom anymore. She was my friend. She looked almost like a child. And I was leaving her, again, to a life of the same daily routines, of caring for a terminal Alzheimeric mother, a computer-obsessed husband, and a seventeen-year-old son (enough said). After all she has done for me.

My mother loves me more than anyone else in this world. She represents everything that is nurturing and selfless. She is the flicker of faith left in this body.

She’s everything I could aspire to be, and everything I’m terrified of becoming.

That’s what this is all about. And I’m finding it’s pretty universal.

When I visited home last month, I hadn’t seen my mom in three months. She picked me up from the airport. Soon after a few laughs and warm words, we started screaming at each other—over Sarah Palin. We had gone maybe ten minutes.

I knew my mom would vote Republican—she always does, for moral issues. She’s gone from being devoutly Catholic to attending one of those John Hagee-like psychochurches, 99.9 percent of whose members think Islam is inherently evil, regardless of the fact that they couldn’t tell you the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Knowing that Obama’s middle name is Hussein is adequate “ammunition” to them. That Palin is pro-life and will do all she can to move this country toward theocracy is all they really need to know.

Because really, they don’t know much else about her. Every “Moms for Palin” blog out there focuses on the “sins” of Obama, not the credentials of Palin.

That’s what my mom and I got in a fight over. I asked her, point blank, what credentials the woman had to helm the executive office of the United States. She really couldn’t answer. And when I remarked about how old McCain is, and the real and present danger of Palin assuming the top post despite a flimsy record for the serious job, she responded, “I’d rather have someone with white hair [McCain] than with kinky hair.”

Wow. It’s things like this that make the slow transformation into my mom so bone-chilling.