It’s So My Mom.

Photo from Slate.com

So I was watching how the Real (BARF) Housewives of Orange County interacted as one’s house was turned into a “bow-tique” (the brunette housewife’s words) of designer duds at a girls-only party. The “friendly” cougar infighting over wardrobe selections somehow made me wonder why my mom doesn’t have such, um, engrossing friends. Hers are mostly boring, annoying, or out of the picture, now that her kids and theirs have graduated the same schools.

I like only one of my mom’s friends. Grace is seemingly normal, and cute. My mom talks of lounging in the “cabana” of Grace’s “unbelievable” house, which is exactly what my mom needs. What she doesn’t need, in my (and dad’s) opinion, is that particular one that lives to proselytize about Jesus, the “conspiracy” of Hormone Replacement Therapy, and the expensive Shaklee vitamins she peddles. (The kook’s daughter was “extremely talented” as a Play-do sculptural artist. She attended a San Antonio university as a lackluster art major, because, she proclaimed, she was just passing the time to find a husband, anyway.)

Anyhow, as I beheld a brief moment of the housewives’ reclining and relaxing in leopard print, I immediately thought of my mom and Grace, gossiping and munching, poolside.

I even inserted myself into this fantasy—now of age, just one of the women (ahem, the younger one). But with enough wherewithal and stature to joke with my mother and Grace: “Come ON mom, the blog wasn’t that bad. Didn’t you like this and such part?” Like friends do. I just don’t have that sort of relationship with my mom.

Not all ice queens are born that way. We’re made.

A couple years ago, during one proselytizing session on the importance of choosing a lifelong mate carefully, my mom divulged her belief that my father spent some time with his ex-wife after my mom and dad were married. I wanted to believe she was just being crazy ‘ol mom, but really, only she and he know the truth. One of them more than the other.

Women get billed as being crazy when a good part of the time, it’s our gut instinct telling us something isn’t right. And then we investigate, and all hell breaks loose.

If we choose to stay in a relationship after lies and deceptions have been revealed, we’re bound to be a bit bitter. Maybe that’s what happened to my mom. Now that I’m in a similar situation, I can’t help but think—what if I end up like her?

I’m not becoming my mom so much as empathizing with her. Here’s a big fat “You were right mom.” That’s a bit vague, only if you’re not a woman.

Stumbled across this article form a new Texas-based Webzine called Totally Her. It’s called “How My Mother Helped Me Choose the Right Man.” About the best ways our moms can advise us on our relationships. This is awesome, practical, and shows why mom really does know best after all. But really, a lifetime of example says even more.

In the end, no relationship is perfect. You have to choose what faults you’ll live with. My mom should have married a Christian man with a lot of money. The kind that wouldn’t mind my Alzhemeric grandmother movin’ in.

I’m still deciding what, if anything, I’m willing to put up with.

Image by apostolia4 via Flickr

I created this blog in the midst of a sea of them to document a particularly pressing social phenomenon: Modern women turning into the mothers they swore they’d be “smarter,” “cooler” and “more laid back” than. How does this happen?

Case in point: I come from a long line of man-haters. My grandmother’s tagline for everything was “Es tu PAPA” (It’s your FATHER) for everything that had gone wrong in the house. On one memorable occasion, my adult mother fessed culpability for a strange scent emanating from the microwave, but my grandmother reverted to her mantra as if in wifely duty. “Es tu Papa,” she corrected. He made that micro stink, dammit. She had nothing if not conviction.

My grandmother is senile now, but my mother carries on her torch. “Your FATHER … ” starts her explanation for everything less-than-praiseworthy in the world. She also likes light less and less, another latently inherited trait from my grandmother.

I grew up siding with my father for all sorts of things. My mother didn’t really work much outside the house after I was born, so she was the eternal money drain. I, being a daddy’s girl and product of a college prep, all-girl and all-overachieving high school, invested a lot of time sympathizing with my father’s criticisms of my mother’s housewife status, and vowing I’d never tread the same path. (Note: My mom didn’t spend her days eating Bon Bons … but our mother-daughter time did consist of watching late-night “Married with Children” episodes while eating Doritos for a while.)

I’d stayed true to all the dating implications a self-sufficient life approach entailed. I had always been perfectly ready to pay for a first date if my compatriot saw fit. It would be a death knell to subsequent outings, of course, but I would pick up that tab if they fell for the bait. (I don’t think this every actually happened, though.)

It took a while, but I now refuse to pay for outings with my boyfriend. My domain is buying groceries and cooking. My call.

To be fair, my mom doesn’t cook. But get this. Now my daily discourse at the coffee shop at which I work goes something like this:

“Hi Jenny.” (William the coffee shop owner.) “How’s the husband?” (Gay code for ‘boyfriend.’)

“Hey Willy.” (Me.) “I made him take me out last night—it’s about time that boy spent some time and money on ME.” My boyfriend, by the way, is a really great guy. (He is a little obsessed with golf and Apple [and I hope that’s all].)

My mother, mind you, is OCD to the point of running to the bathroom to corroborate a first-hand report that you (I) didn’t use her show soap, leave a ring of water in the bottom of the bathtub or rest a heated hair styling tool directly on the bathroom counter.

I’m not that bad … yet. When I do clean, I fight the urge to yell at my boyfriend for the perfectly normal practice of shaving in the sink or showering in the bathtub. Goddammit, though, if I didn’t just remove 1,000 strands and stubs of hair from them.

And I already send text rants when my boyfriend takes significantly longer than me to answer a text.

Whoa. How did I get here? Is it laid out in my gene plan?

Or is it feminism’s backlash? See this article from Alice Walker’s (”The Color Purple”) daughter, wherein Rebecca Walker (yep, she kept the last name) second-guesses her mother’s neglectful, cold feminism.

We pay for the sins of our mothers, it seems. By swinging the other way … or becoming them.