"An (Off-Key) Christmas Carol" - 12-6-08

Last night, on our way to an aborted evening of entertainment at a showing of “A Christmas Carol” at the Wells Theater, Mom and I got into a confrontation that shook me and cracked some of the hard-earned, unquestioned trust I had placed squarely on Mom’s shoulders. By the time we had turned around and come right back home because I was too upset to enjoy the show or even be in the same room as Mom, we had communicated well enough for me to see that her lectures about how many tens of thousands of people have just been laid off and she didn’t want to hear any more complaints from me, were all from her perspective that that kind of “buck up” lecture helps her count her blessings. On Wednesday, I was overwhelmed with my misery and with the horrific prospect of staying in teaching at Newsome Park indefinitely and cried for an hour after I had talked with Margaret who, of anyone, would know of any crack at all I could slip through to get out of this school, told me sympathetically, “You just have no options.” I got off the phone as gracefully as I could and the bomb went off. A true crying jag. I have cried privately plenty often this year, but only have had a few actual crying jags – running mascara, face in my hands, whimpering tears instead of my usual silent sobs, an hour passing before I can talk coherently, the whole bit. And I called Mom because that is the long-standing agreement, tacit in many ways, that we have. And next day, as I started my day with an inexplicable calm and composure, she sent me an email, as she had the last time I had sobbed to her that I just didn’t know how I could go one more day, let alone all the dozens after. Her email was a buck-up, get over it, you have so much to be grateful for, etc., and crippled me again so I had to get it together a.s.a.p. before the kids came in. We emailed back and forth, and for the first time, I responded to her perennial concern over my lack of “resiliency,” not with a meek resignation, but with a clarification of my definition of resiliency. Basically, I told her that she is the only one who sees all that emotion, and that I am resilient because I go into work the next day and do my best and no one has a clue that I am any more stressed than any other teacher in that cursed building. I told her that it is because of her that I can be resilient. I thought I had clarified well enough the nature of those occasional sobbing phone calls to Mom, but apparently not. It took driving to and from Norfolk for me to understand that she had still been shaken up by the sheer force of emotion I had lobbed to her, crying about how I couldn’t see how I could go in the next day and the next week and month and year. She was thinking that could easily lead me to storming into Sherry’s office and screaming, “I quit!” even though I had specifically assured her that because I could still come to Mom when it got really bad, that scenario was forestalled. So her whole lecture and refusal to be the one I could go to when I was crying about my job was all coming from her fear of this economy and my actually chucking it all with no back-up plan.

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I was in disbelief that after all these years and all the time I had spent with her and all the me I had let her see, she wasn’t assured of my character to know I am far too much my father’s and mother’s daughter to be so reckless. I was also distantly alarmed to the point of horror that she had been my only safe outlet when things go that bad and she was effectively telling me she was taking herself out of that role and essentially I had no outlets now, after I had specifically communicated to her that it was only because I had her to turn to that I could go on and make the right choice.

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So to her, this discussion was just her being a good parent and showing me what a good life I had, basically stop sniveling and be grateful, because when things have gotten hard for her, she has gotten through it when she’s thought of how much she has. But for me, it was far more than a lecture; it surpassed that definition when she said, “So let’s not have any more complaints.” Ever? Really? This year and its stresses are by no means over, and there is nothing I can do with them? So everything we gained, all those pieces of trust that had finally all clicked together that day at Jim’s Beans years ago when I told her everything, about my chimera, my depression, my suicidal thoughts, and she handled it and I knew I could come to her with anything because she said, “I want you to come to me before it gets to that point because I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here on this earth,” when all that happened and all that trusted solidified now, I was only eventually going to have the rug pulled out from under me and have no one? No one? I couldn’t process it.

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Fortunately, by the end of the bad night, we had cleared up a lot of it. She saw what she had done and I saw what she had instead tried to do. I told her that not all my trust was broken – that could never happen; she had shown her true character well enough for so many years for that to ever happen – but my trust in coming to her when I’m only knees with the stress and the long months and years stretching ahead of me was damaged. How could I let her see all of that misery? How could she ever know the nature of it? How could I not edit myself? When I truly did not see how I would literally get dressed, walk out my door, drive that commute, and face the kids, what would I say? Would I offer disclaimers before every thought? I had done that for too much of my life, having to preface every thought with, “I know that…” I don’t do that anymore. I spent too many years feeling I didn’t have the right to any complaints or dissatisfaction because I had such a cushy life. It took 25 years to finally own that I had as much right as anyone else to a bad day. I told her this in that dark car. She said she still wanted me to come to her and not edit.

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She’s sense and I’m sensibility, I see that with a new clarity. She’s Eleanor and I’m Marianne. We love each other and are close and on the same page about most things, but at some point, we handle stress and unhappiness very differently. I told her this, too, and that while she responds to those stern lectures well, my nature is such that that only makes it harder for me to see clearly. I respond best to soft sympathy so I can see I’m not alone and maybe I can make it one more day. Maybe all this happened so she could understand that essential difference between our natures and respond better in the future.

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I emphasized to her that I would never be able to take such a self-indulgent risk as to quit and say to hell with my beloved condo and my whole life. But I don’t care about the economy and how high-pressured the remaining jobs become. My job is stressful, no matter which way you cut it. My workplace environment is unhappy, unsupportive, and incompetently managed, no matter how you look at it. There are certain objective truths that remain what they are regardless of the subjective emotion with which I may view them.

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I think she really understands and I think I do, too. I told her everything I’ve ever written in her birthday and Mother’s Day cards is still true, and we’d just have to get back to that trust. But once I got home and went for a run, I was faced with some hard questions. Was I really as strong as others? Am I just more delicate, that my breaking point was so much closer than others? I always knew I lacked a certain toughness that others had who had had to work from a young age and become independent so much sooner than I. I could never see how they could be happy when their lives were so hard, and shied away from what that meant in my own nature. I can’t help that I had a soft life, and Mom said she’s always been more reticent than Dad in giving me gifts and buying me things. But it is what it is. I told her I’ve done well with what I’ve had. I still make good choices, always trying to live well, and wisely. When things have gotten hard I’ve somehow managed to make it through. I just maybe feel more than she does, maybe feel truer and sharper than she does. Maybe that is where the essential difference comes from between me and others who seem to be able to take more in stoic silence.

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And as I sat there on the pier, looking up at the moon, I thought, “Am I then good enough? Is this a flaw in my fabric? Is my strength enough, good enough, worthy enough, in comparison with that of others?” I’m too old not to accept who I am, and even getting an unflattering picture of myself or a new knowledge of a long-held flaw can’t change that. I wasn’t asking that question with the fear that all I know of myself would crumble to the ground under the weight of a storm, however great. Any fault in the foundation of what I’d built of my understanding of myself won’t be great enough to topple that. But I still had to ask the question. “Am I good enough now? Am I strong enough?” I am not as tough as others. I know this. I’ve always wanted to be delicate, but I seem to be delicate in all the wrong ways. “Is my strength good enough?”

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But then I thought of how low I get, how I am on the floor sobbing in despair that this is my life no matter how much I want a different life, and I can still go into work the next day, dry-eyed and composed. I can hug my kids, laugh with them and tease them and speak softly to them to make them love me when I saw I had to, and never let them see how much I don’t want them. That is a kind of strength, isn’t it? It takes a certain strength to show love where there is none. Perhaps that’s a woman’s strength. At any rate, it seems to be my strength. But where will that leave me, I have to wonder?