“Moms and their sons,” my coworker and I rolled out eyes at each other. “What’s up with that?”
My supervisor Denise, and I, we’re both girl moms. No sons between us. She was furious right now with her brother — her mother’s only son and the baby of the family.
See, she’d just gotten back from her mother’s funeral in her hometown in rural Alabama.
While there making preparations before and after the funeral, she and her sister realized that their little brother — now in his fifties with three divorces and two kids under her belt — had convinced their mom to completely change her will to favor him.
He’d convinced their mother, with whom he remained very close up until her death, to leave him almost everything she possessed: the 5,000 square-foot home and accompanying acreage in rural Alabama, the baby grand piano, the furs and jewelries.
Denise even confessed to being frustrated with her deceased mother over the situation, telling me that mother and son were deeply enmeshed throughout childhood and adulthood. In her words:
“He never heard the words “no” or “that’s wrong” from her…She felt guilty that his dad wasn’t around, maybe. That boy was never told that he was wrong, only that he was perfect. Who will tell him that he’s perfect now?”
…
Listening to Denise vent about her family, my mind immediately flashed back to the night before.
I’d just had a row with my own brother, a bachelor, childless attorney in his mid-thirties who comes by our parents’ home very often (I’m talking multiple times a day, sometimes). He brings loads of laundry, or his massive German Shepherd, or his ravenous appetite.
Sometimes, he brings all three.
That particular night, while diving deep into his mom’s spaghetti and meatballs, he decided to take issue with my choice of urgent medical care for an issue with my daughter’s foot (a plantar’s wart).
Though I’d set up an appointment for the following day at a clinic that accepted my insurance, he was adamant that I should have expended more time and energy finding her a same-day appointment.
“Did you call every single Urgent Care in the city? Every single one?” He demanded.
Furious, I hissed at him. “I don’t take life advice from single, childless mama’s boys in their thirties.”
I felt bad after, though I don’t know if being called a mama’s boy actually bothers him.
…
Just a few days after learning about Denise’s brother’s manipulation of their mother’s will, I caught up with an old friend from way back when. A childhood buddy.
She told me about the recent spate of personal tragedies her mother was enduring.
Last year, her husband (my friend’s dad) died after a long, arduous battle with Parkinson’s disease. They’d been married almost fifty years.
Then, just two months after his passing, she was diagnosed with cancer.
Then, a couple months after the early-stage cancer diagnosis, the home where she’d raised all nine (yes, nine) kids burned down in a fire.
A freak tragedy, sparked — quite literally — by the intersection of record-breaking Texas summer heat and flammable wood chips left out in the yard.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, though I was relieved to hear that her mother was now in remission from cancer after chemotherapy and surgery.
“What is your mom going to do about a home?” I inquired.
Turns out her older brother, a successful film-maker, was buying her a house just down the street from the home she lost.
But that’s not all. He also purchased the property of their burned down family home. He is building his mother her dream house there.
…
The news from my friend reminded me of an ex-boyfriend who had cared daily for his ailing mother until her death.
Though his mother, Sue, was not yet sixty years old at the time, she had become infirm from depression and alcoholism and was unable to get up from the armchair where she spent her days and nights in front of the television set.
She, too, had recently almost perished in a home fire.
This fire, however, wasn’t caused by excessive heat or flammable wood chips. She caused it herself, when she passed out drunk while smoking a cigarette.
She lit herself, and the apartment, on fire.
He moved her into his own house temporarily while she healed, then put her in an apartment just down the street from him. For the next couple years, she lived in that apartment, still never moving from her seat in front of the TV. He stopped buying her cigarettes, only vodka instead.
Each day, he brought her meals (usually frozen or fast food), bathed her, and changed her diapers. Usually, he had to do these things by force.
“You’re worthless!” She would spit on him as she forcibly changed her diaper or bathed her. “Get your hands off of me!”
Occasionally, after a rough day with his mother, he would remark to me, half-joking half-not, “She’s like the witch from Hansel and Gretel. She eats children.”
“Why don’t you hire someone to help you out?” I sometimes asked.
He never had an answer, though he seemed annoyed by the question.
…
Yesterday, I headed to my daughter’s school for carpool pickup. I was completely drained from a very fast-paced, high-stress week, both at work and at home.
I guess I didn’t realize how much the day, and week, showed in my face.
Two of the three carpool boys that I help shuttle to and from school spotted me, coming up to my car window to say hello.
The older one immediately asked me if I had been crying. I was startled. Both that it was so visible in my face and also that a kid was actually asking me this question, even seeming genuinely worried about it.
“Yeah!” The littler one piped up. “You look sad!”
Truthfully, I didn’t know how to respond to the concerned little faces.
Though I’d been carting around my daughter and her friends for years now, from parties and playdates and other events, none of the girls had ever asked me such a question. Really, they barely acknowledged my existence outside of asking me for things, like sleepovers and slushies. I’d taken it for granted, actually liked the feeling of anonymity it granted me.
Now, I felt uncomfortably exposed, but also touched.
“How sweet of you to notice!” I told them in my best ‘mom’ voice. “Thank you for being so considerate! Really I’m fine, just stress from work.”
I was feeling mushy inside, an awareness breaking open inside of me like a seed.
An awareness of the possibility of a special mother-son bond that, as a girl-mom, maybe I just don’t understand.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Marvin Meyer on Unsplash