response 25 of 65:

Aug 5 00:58 UTC 1997

That's interesting. I've never thought about it, but I have usually
out-earned my husband during our years together (but only because
we decided that I would work and he would do the house-husband thing
when Rhiannon was born, so he was home for over seven years, and never
really has gotten back on the career track).

This item popped up rather providentially for me, since I'm having
a bit of a mom crisis. A bit of background -- my mother married my
dad at eighteen after dating him for two weeks, and I was born six
and a half months later (I was a really early preemie, mdeical
bills out the wazoo). My dad was/is a very, um, patriarchal person,
e.g., I wasn't allowed to work while I lived at home, nor was I
allowed to date. He made all decisions and ruled the house with
a whim of iron. He would have rage fits if anything at all wasn't
as he expected it to be. So ... I repressed a lot of resentment
about my mother, which I never have expressed to her, even after
I realized it about a year ago.

My dad had a stroke twenty-one years ago, about the time I got
engaged, and my mom told me he had wanted a divorce at that time.
Howsoever, she did not believe in abandoning him, so she has spent
the last twenty-one years catering to him, caring for him, being
his interpreter (he can't really speak, since his stroke was 
unusually severe and paralyzed both sides from the mouth down),
and taking his rage attacks. 

Earlier this summer, I got a call that she was sick. She had been
having stomach attacks for several years, which we suspected were
gall bladder attacks, but the doctors had never been able to find
anything wrong. I suspect she didn't go. She has never really
believed herself worth taking care of. It turned out that 
this time her stomach stopped working. It wouldn't process any
food. Her doctor couldn't figure out why, and neither could
the specialist, so she was sent to Cleveland Clinic, where she
was diagnosed with stress, anorexia, and depression -- all contributing
to her stomach problem, which was also possibly caused by undiagnosed
diabetes. 

So she is sent home, and spent several weeks with her sister, until
she's *still* not getting better, and my brother finally takes
her to the psych ward, and thence to the nursing home where my dad
is. I had thought that now she's getting counselling, and anti-
depression meds, that she'd be all right. Well, last night, my brother
called, and he's giving me the classic I thought you were coming home
this week (even though I havne't made any plans to do so, and I 
wouldn't have told him even if I had) and why aren't you? Can't you
just leave your job? 

So I called my mother today and found out that although she had been
getting better, now she "just isn't hungry" any more.  

So, I'm getting the bad daughter seal of disapproval because I'm not
dropping everything to minister to her (evne though I don't know what
I could do that the doctors and psychiatrists aren't) and sit by
her bedside for as long as she's ill. Apparently the fact that I have
a life, and a job and everything doesn't mean a thing, since I am a
woman, and I should just drop everything to take care of my parents.
(This is something that makes me think my mother and the rest of my
family live in a totally different world than I do -- I am expected
to quit my job to be a handmaiden, since after all, I'm the woman.)

Sorry this was so long, but I'm just very frustrated!

response 27 of 65:

Aug 6 03:17 UTC 1997

Hey Valerie! Glad to be here. This conference is fascinating.
I am hooked!

response 31 of 65:

Aug 14 04:12 UTC 1997

I've noticed as I've gotten older I am starting to look like my mom. That
doesn't freak me out. But I've noticed personality changes in me... increased
pickiness. I'm more concerned with how I dress now, which didn't concern me as
much before. I can't just throw on a T-shirt and go anymore. 

However I will die before I dye my hair blond and get a big hairdo, as my mom
has done for the past 25 years. Hell, no.

response 33 of 65:

Sep 13 22:03 UTC 1997

Even more fun than waking up one morning and seeing your mom in the mirror
is actually being mistaken for her. This has happened to me on two recent
occasions and it was *way* too weird. Once by the receptionist at the DO's
office (we see the same doc) and once by a checker at the local (tiny town
where I grew up and she still lives) grocery. These people actually thought
I was my mother standing in front of them. I can't describe it.

response 35 of 65:

Sep 14 18:50 UTC 1997

Grin. I doubt that I'd ever be mistaken for my mother -- I have a good
hudred pounds on her. That may be why I have the extra weight, I dunno,
but I certainly never wanted to look like her.

response 39 of 65:

Nov 6 23:03 UTC 1997

now that my dad is gone, i feel my mom and i are becoming
closer. we talk more, and more openly.
she isnt afraid to express her feelings or opinions to me now.
i now feel very protective of her. too bad i am
so far away.
but it is an improvement.

response 41 of 65:

Nov 7 01:41 UTC 1997

Coded?

My Mom and I getting "closer" in that we speak more often and more 
comfortably in the last few years -- but we've done that by agreeing not 
to discuss anything of any major importance, so I don't think of it as 
being "closer" exactly.  *sigh*

response 43 of 65:

Nov 7 14:18 UTC 1997

"Coded" = had her heart stop... She went into respiratory/cardiac 
arrest in August, I think it was -- after her surgery to have a tube
inserted into her stomach so she could eat. Ever since, she's been
very vague and just "not there" and since we're talking long distance,
it's a frustrating thing. I feel very much as if I'm talking to my
father (who had a stroke twenty years ago, and who just kind of tunes you out
when you're talking to him...). 

It's too bad, too, since when she was up here a year ago in the summer,
we had the most lovely talk and walk in the woods, and I felt as if we
might actually be getting closer. I have always had this kind of shell
between my mother and myself, partially because I never understood how
she could allow certain things to happen to me, and partially because
I apparently was never a "cuddly" child, and there was always a 
reeserve there. I guess we were never meant to be friends. It's really
strange when you feel closer to your mother-in-law than you ever did
to your real mom. I cna call Mom Price and talk to her about ANYTHING
and she'll understand, instantly. We have a rapport that's like nothing
else I've experienced and I wish I had it with my own mother. 

As a mother, I've tried very hard to build such a rapport with Rhiannon
and with Gareth. Gareth was much easier for a while, since we have
similar personalities, but now that he's a teenager, we're not so close.
Rhiannon, on the other hand, is becoming a really close friend. We can
talk and go out together, and it's just ... nice to be with her. 

response 45 of 65:

Nov 8 00:17 UTC 1997

Too, we tend to think it's okay to not like our parents but that they
could never *not* like us back.  Maybe your mother finds you to be
uninteresting, flighty, focused on yourself, immature, a hypochondriac,
high-strung, and/or shallow. She has that right. Right? ;-) 

Maybe she's doing the best she can with what she's got.

response 47 of 65:

Nov 8 05:06 UTC 1997

Do you feel better about yourself now that you've given it your all to shoot me
down, Mary? That's quite sad. While I'm not too concerned with your highly
judgmental and unwarranted opinion of me, it's annoying that you obviously feel
the need to be as negative as possible on here. It's as if you're on a rampage.
Everyone's opinion is wrong except yours. When did I say I was faultess? And
when will you admit that you aren't either?

response 49 of 65:

Nov 8 14:01 UTC 1997

Beeswing, i don't think that mary's #45 was anything remotely resembling
the hateful, egotistical attack that you've interpreted it as.  She's no
paragon of restrained diplomacy, but from everything i know about her she's 
a nice person, and i don't believe that she would have entered anything
like #45 if she thought that you might be real sensitive on the issue.
Read #46 a couple times - i thing anderyn gets mary's points pretty well.