Thursday, March 19, 1998
Insecurity obscures mother’s talents
QUESTIONS: Society can make adolescents hate parent’s unique
quirks
I spend a lot of time loathing and loving the fact that the
human race is such a slew of adaptable putty-heads. I look back at
where I’m from and what I was taught to value: all of the
sparkly-Mercedes driving, Neiman Marcus-shopping, two-story
ocean-front home-owning baloney that leaves a community paralyzed
in its need for things to define themselves. I remember being blind
to all of the conditioned madness. I’m pretty much a
putty-head.
When I was 10 I was angry because my mother didn’t wear eyeliner
or have Estee Lauder pink acrylic nails like the other mothers I
saw. I was bitter because she rarely wore anything besides
school-teacher dresses with big pockets in the front and because
she drove a dumpy car. I was mortified that my mother was not
glamorous.
In elementary school I loathed having my mother pick me up in
front of the playground. I could never decide whether it was worse
to walk home (I had to pass the high school and there were
tenacious attacks from the angst-ridden bandos) or get into her
dilapidated Capri in front of my peers. When the latter would
happen, and it usually did, I would seethe with passionate hate,
abnormal for a 10-year-old. It was not like the other parents’
cars. There was an inch-and-a-half of Cheerios and other organic
litter on the floor. (My younger brother still felt compelled to
snack without coordination.) Inside, the marigold stuffing poured
out of the vinyl sun-cracked seams; outside it was a muted teal. I
hated it because there was only an AM radio that played ’50s music,
because my mother was totally unfazed and because she would drive
around singing out of tune, bongo-ing her thumbs on the shredded
steering wheel. I hated the name Capri. It was a wannabe wussy
sportscar. I hated it because my mom would laugh, throw us some
Cheerios, sing louder and say, "Honey, I’m not going to spend a lot
of money on a car you kids eat and slobber and spill in!" My little
brother would grin in cahoots with her, with Cheerios stuck to his
T-shirt like ornaments on a Christmas tree. It wasn’t like my best
friend’s mom’s car, that sleek white Mercedes with the sunroof, the
tapedeck and the Bruce Springsteen album ("Greetings from Asbury
Park, N.J.") we liked to listen to. Her car smelled like perfume.
My mother didn’t wear perfume.
I loved to ride in that Mercedes. I loved the leatherette
cushion that pulled out in the center and separated my best friend
and me into equal spaces.
The back seat of the Capri had an almost complete lack of
interior. The majority was springy yellow foam. (Before having
children my parents had Boxers.) I would remain enflamed in the
back, watching my brother and his floppy red lips sing along to the
totally uncool ’50s station. The nincompoop didn’t even know the
words. His vocal stylings consisted of elongating the vowels. Like
a family dog, he loved getting to ride in cars. The excitement took
over and for some reason his legs would stick straight out, sort of
paralyzed in front of him, so all I saw was his bobbing blond head
and his catatonic blue-and-yellow Zipps tennis shoes.
I spent a lot of my youth in this dismal state – a tacit
repulsion from everything related to my mom because there was no
way my mom was cool. Just a couple of squinting eyes and crossed
arms over my chest – that was me. As years went by, I found other
things to hate. I embraced magazine-dispensed style and mocked my
mother’s skills. She was a home-economics teacher. – I made it my
duty to negate activities like sewing, cooking, ’50s music, (insert
anything she liked or was good at).
It’s 1998 and the Capri was traded in ages ago. I can’t sew a
button but I make a decent stir-fry and take pleasure in Otis
Redding. It’s just part of the cycle, I guess. I let my environment
dictate a lot. I don’t know why I wasn’t more like my brother, all
slobber and grins, but I know now what a powerful woman my mom is.
I’ve watched her sew me new pants, grow 12 varieties of roses and
prop over a pineapple upside-down cake that would make Julia Child
whimper. I’ve seen her paint a house, and my father has shown me a
turquoise ring she made for him when he came home from Vietnam.
All those skills that I made such an effort to cover up have
become valuable to me. They make up her texture. They are her edges
that don’t often show at first glance. They are not well coifed or
dusted with Estee Lauder pink blush. I’ve realized that when I was
a little girl I wanted a hybrid of Kathie Lee Gifford and Cheryl
Tiegs for a mother. I wanted to watch someone wake up and "put on
her face." I guess I learned this from my friends, or television or
something. I guess that’s what irks me.
As a kid, how did I morph into such a shallow, judgmental brat?
Is there a remedy for insecurity? Did it happen to everyone? How
come after adding fractions we didn’t have Elementary Emerson?
("Alright boys and girls, repeat after me, ‘Insist on yourself;
never imitate’ and for extra credit, who can tell me what ‘heed thy
private dream; thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and the
skepticism’ means?") I went home last weekend, drove around a lot,
thought about the flying Cheerios and my brother’s Zipps. I was
thankful that my mother had texture – and for the first time, I
really missed that Capri.