Parent Protocal

Interaction with Mom:
Mom tells me a story about this lavish wedding where the family did all this work, it ended up raining...like monsoon type of rain, the bride reacted so horribly that the father (owner of the yard) ended up not even attending the wedding. (And she is in noooo way hinting I will be like this with this story. It's told neutrally.)

Me: That's horrible. If it rains for us, we will put on our REI jackets, hand out umbrellas and take pictures of us laughing through it all.

Mom: You can't find umbrellas this time of year.


I pause.

Me: OK, well then you can be miserable.
Mom: No, what I'll be doing is handing out plastic bags for everyone.

We laugh. I leave.

I think on this interaction for a moment and during my retelling to Zach realize that it's sort of a great example of what I sometimes have a hard time with her. (And what Z confessed he sometimes has a hard time with me....soooo interesting.) Her intention was to agree with me. Yes! Let's have a good attitude! But what came out was negativity, "You can't find umbrellas that time of year." It was my very 14-year-old-teenager comment back to her that instigated the positive plastic bag comment. If I had left when I really should have, I would have walked away with a really negative comment by her. A, "we're fucked no matter what happens" comment.

So after a few minutes talking to Zach, I went back in and said, in a very upbeat voice and attitude, this is how we interacted and this is why it's hard. And at some point it started to go down hill. She said she kind of saw what I was saying but kept getting stuck on the fact that she wasn't *being* negative. She said she realized while Grandma visited that Grandma doesn't actually mean negative things. "Yes," I said, "but if she SAYS negative things it's not our responsibility to translate everything for her. She needs to say it." Mom then said something about how she tries to give me the benefit of the doubt when I'm being snotty, and I basically asked how that was relevant and she said, "It would be nice if you gave me some slack too."


This communication problem is different than the one Z and I had a lot during the earlier part of our relationship. I'd think that what he said sounded mean. But it wasn't the actual words, it was the connotation of those words, or what I felt was instigating those words. In Mom's case, she's just actually saying negative things. I explained that if she had stopped at the umbrella comment, I would have walked away wondering why she needed to be negative.

She says she doesn't know how to catch this sort of thing. As if I'm asking her to look at panes of glass and plexiglass and tell me which is which. But, you know, maybe I am.