I want to write about something today, but I don't want to come across as arrogant. I am not sure I can succeed. My mother who I am currently living with since she is 80 and should not be living alone, and I am widowed have had numerous conflicts recently. Many of them stem from the age gap. When I was in my teens my mom was sort of my hero. I thought she was a great person (and in many ways she is). I did not rebel against her like some teenagers did. In fact, none of my close friends rebelled against their moms either. I am not sure why, but I think it was in part due to the fact that our mothers were middle class stay-at-home moms who devoted themselves to our well-being. My mom bought or sewed me flattering clothes as she is gifted in that way. She reassured me that I was attractive. However, looking back on our relationship in later years, I realized that mom had not really encouraged me to continue with my post secondary education when things got tough. My dad was killed in a car accident when I was studying for my spring semester final exams and I wrote those exams in a zombie state just managing to pass them, rather than continuing with the high grades I had received earlier in the semester. Neither she nor I realized that I could have requested special consideration due to the fact my father had been killed, but I doubt my performance would have been any better had we done that anyway.
Something that comes up repeatedly is the fact that while I am working full-time as a medical transcriptionist from my home computer, I have a habit of taking a glass of water, or tea, or coffee to my computer and sipping it while I work. Then, on my break I will be in the kitchen and will make another cup of tea and drink it out there and leave it there at my place at the table. I had forgotten that I had an empty mug beside my computer. So now I have one empty water glass at my computer and one empty coffee mug sitting beside it. I will resume my typing and ignore the two drinking vessels. Again I will have a break and will prepare yet another mug of tea and take that to my bedroom where I will sit propped up on my bed to read a magazine article. When that cup of tea is emptied, I will be preoccupied with the article I have just read or be thinking of resuming my work at the computer and walk out of my bedroom leaving the empty tea mug at my bedside table. Then I will take the mug and empty water glass to the kitchen sink and soak the mug in the sink to remove the tea stains. I will fill up my water glass and take it back to my computer work station. This type of thing occurs every day. My mother finds it irritating that I tend to leave mugs and drinking glasses in every room I spend time in in her home.
She mentioned to me that her new neighbour next door told her she does the same thing. Mom said to me today as I was washing the dishes (she refuses to use the dishwasher, except on special occasions when we have guests to dinner) that her neighbour told her she leaves mugs all over her house too. Mom said to me, "I can understand someone like you who is preoccupied with your work doing that, but someone who is retired, I can't understand it!" I simply replied that it becomes more and more difficult to change habits the older you get. From her comments I can only deduce that she probably complained to her neighbour that I leave cups all over the house, and her neighbour didn't think that was such a bad thing, because she does it as well. Giving mom the benefit of the doubt, she may have just mentioned it incidentally. She probably did. But all my life I have sided with the person whose mind is on things that demand higher mental skills than on household tasks. I suppose you could say, I am more of a Sherlock Holmes type person than a Martha Stewart type person. Of course, I am not a man, but I cannot think of a woman to compare myself with at this particular moment.
My mother is concerned with "domestic science" that is for her domestic tasks are considered a scientific pursuit - everything must be done in a methodical scientific mannter. There is some benefit in this, in that household tasks should not be done in a haphazard manner, but one can carry it to extremes. I believe my mother sometimes tends to do that, since she is retired and has a desire to excel, except in her realm, excellence has mainly been restricted to her hobbies and her household. She did work part-time for 15 years after dad died, and she pursued her job as a switchboard operator in the same manner of excellence, but a job such as that is not on the scale of a career such as medicine, the law, or engineering, for example.
To sum up this diatribe, I am not going to change and niether is mom so we must do our best to live side by side in as harmonious a way as we can manage, probably for the rest of her life.
