SPEAK
MEDIA
MISUNDERSTANDING MY MOTHER After years of fighting, I finally came to respect my mom for the sacrifices she made for me //ADAMVOSSEN
Coming to terms. Adam used to disagree with his seemingly over-strict mother, but eventually realized he shared her stubbornness and came to respect her more deeply. Their relationship matured and Adam became able to make compromises with his mother. It took time and tears, but the two became closer.
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I stared at my mother from across the kitchen. My throat was dry, but my eyes were moist and I wiped snot from my nose. Our fight about my grades, her expectations, my attitude, or any of the usual topics had come to a stand-still: neither of us was willing to back down or try to empathize with the other. These disagreements had become common to us and the rest of our family. My father had retreated to his office, my brothers to their rooms, all much less confrontational than my mother or myself.
When my oldest brother started daycare my mom went back to work. But she wasn't there long before she made the decision to quit her job and be a stay-at-home mom. My brother wasn't alone for long. By the time he was 4 years old, my two younger brothers and I had come along. My mother dealt with us in probably the only way there is to deal with having four sons in a four year time period: She made rules and those rules were enforced.
When chatting on AOL instant messenger was the big thing in middle school, she put an hour time limit on our accounts. It wasn't just a parentally enforced rule that I could sneak around. My account was programmed to kick me off as soon as my hour was up. While the other kids at school came in without homework done but having seen plenty of the WB the night before I wondered why I had lost out so much in the parental lottery.
My parents insisted we did our homework before any other activity, and my mom enforced this rule vehemently. My school began using an online grading system and parents had the option to check grades at any time. Of course my mother used this — I felt like no detail of my life went unchecked. I wanted the "cool clothes" and those clothes cost more than my mother thought was necessary for a middle school boy to have. Every time I ventured into Abercrombie & Fitch or Hollister, my mother would make disparaging comments about the price tags and quality of the clothes. Why didn't she understand that this was not only cool, but necessary?
She looked down on some of the friends I made unabashedly judging the way they were raised and claiming that their parents were too permissive. I wasn't allowed to hang out with them outside of school. Being an overdramatic young teen, I envisioned myself as a prisoner of her rules. It seemed like no one else at school had these restrictions or had to deal with "old-fashioned ideals," and it infuriated me to have to live in what I thought was such a suffocating atmosphere.
My brothers grumbled about these things but none had the battles that my mother and I did. Discussions that turned into screaming matches that turned into tears became our only communication between days of silence. There was no sort of progress. We both thought we were
right and the other was wrong. I saw my mother as a rigid and uncompromising ice queen. I came to loathe being at home and didn't hesitate in vocalizing this.
Being in high school and having a driver's license made things more bearable, but I still found reason to complain. I was only allowed to go out one night a weekend, never on weeknights, and my curfew was a concrete midnight. I felt like she was trying to ruin my social life. Didn't she understand how important it was for a 16-year-old to be able to do whatever until whenever?
And then somewhere between my junior and senior year of high school, I made an important realization. I had always known that the reason my mom and I could never seem to agree was because we were both stubborn and opinionated. But I began to notice that those weren't our only similarities. We were loyal, defensive, analytical and impatient. While my brothers had all inherited my father's relaxed sensibility, I realized that I had gotten most of my traits from my mother. We're sarcastic and tightly-wound. We clean frantically to deal with anxiety. We're unable and unwilling
to take the help of others. It was all there.
I couldn't believe that the person who I'd spent a good deal of my post-childhood years misunderstanding was a lot like me. This realization and my rising level of maturity dramatically improved our relationship in my last two years of high school. Instead of fighting, we could discuss and compromise. Maybe she saw that I was growing up and that she could trust me more. Maybe she was finally worn out from all the fighting. Or maybe she had made the same realization I did.
When I went off to college and made new friends, I heard about other family dynamics and saw how these new acquaintances had turned out because of the way they were raised. I had a second important revelation. My mom didn't make me do my homework and stop me from hanging out with people and keep me off instant messenger because she liked being the bad guy. She did all of those things despite knowing she was being the bad guy. She wanted my brothers and me to become the best young men we could, and she knew that being a good mom did not mean being
a well-liked mom.
I thought about the sacrifices she made for us — her career, her social life, her graying hair — and I realized she is one of the most selfless people I know. For all the anger I used to feel toward her the respect I now have surpasses it ten-fold.
There are still disagreements. We're still stubborn and opinionated, but we've both learned to give and take. Home isn't the place that it was when I was an angry young teen anymore. The kitchen that was once our battleground has become a place where we can connect instead of conflict.
I stare at my mother from across the kitchen I laugh as I stand at the bar, chopping tomatoes on a butcher board. She's standing in front of the oven, cooking ground beef in a pot. We're chatting amicably, gossiping about people from my high school and what we've heard about them She's still the same mother, and I'm still the same son, but, thankfully, it's a completely different relationship.
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