2008
The Circle of Life?
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.
