Thanks Mom

I have a grievance. I have a grievance and I am airing it here.

When we were at my parents for Thanksgiving, my mother called me into a room and showed me some pictures that she has framed. She has dozens of photos of our family everywhere in her house. Her mother did the same and I think it is really cool. She picked up a picture that was about 10 years old of herself, my sister and I. Then she said "Look at your hair here, doesn't it look pretty?". Then she picks up another photo, really old, points at me in it and says "Look here, look how nice your hair was then".

I stared.

*thud* is the sound an eyelash would have made falling, if such a thing dared to happen.

I have been growing my hair long because I love long hair. I fear "Mom hair", that is true, but I also really love it long. I don't like to take care of it long, and quite frankly I wander around looking like a wife of Warren Jeffs from his polygamous sect in Texas most of the time. I pin up the bangs on top in a little poof, then shove all the rest into a ponytail, loop, or ugly braid most days. But it's there when I want it to look good and after all, it is my head and my head has been owned by me longer than it was owned by her by now.

I was fairly well stunned. Sadly, not terribly surprised. So I muttered a few things about, well yeah it looked good then and um yeah, that was nice. Then my mother is starting to notice that I am not as excited about her observation as she is. So she starts asking "Don't you think it was pretty then? I mean, you have to agree it was pretty". I said something to the effect of, "I can't believe you" and went out to tell The Husband that my mother just told me my hair was ugly. He is a good The Husband and if nothing else I have taught him his lines well, so he said of course, that he thinks my hair looks great.

By now my mother has charged out of the room following me. Now she is hammering at me to agree with her. "It looked good, you don't agree that it looked good? You don't think it was pretty?" and she repeated herself about 20 more times. Stuck like a record she was, or like Genea on a bad day (more on that later). Finally I told her, "you know what, I am totally going to write this down on my blog and the whole world wide web is going to know what you said". Then she repeated the questions above and ended it. She must have thought she saw some confidence that needed squelching. Sigh.

So we were on the phone the other day and she mentioned something she had said on Thursday but I had thought I did not hear her right so I had ignored it. Lucky for me she repeated herself. She said, she doesn't think Genea has gotten any better in the past 2 years. Not better at all, in fact maybe even worse.

Talk about soul-crushing. Damn.

I work harder with Genea on any given day than I ever have in the span of any 2 random months of my entire life. Genea spent the first 18 months or so with us doing the Miss Pretty Perfect act with other people. Not at home with us mind you, but around anyone that was not us, she was a delightful charming child. It was all fake. So now the past year or so around my mother aka Genea's grandmother she has started to let out a smidge, just a smidge of The Crazy. So that is what I told her. I said, its a compliment she feels more comfortable with you now. She used to be fake around you and now she is showing herself a little.

The truth is, even a little peek into The Crazy is more than folks can take. The girls stayed with my parents for a few days over the summer and my mom sent them home early when they were surprised by a visit from The Crazy. It sent my mother over the edge and after a day of it was so overwhelmed, sucked in and dragged down, she called us to pick them up early. The Husbands mother, the other grandmother, saw a brief glimpse about a year ago and she literally ran out of my house, hustled down the stairs crying after less than 10 minutes. She had to leave.

So that's how things are rolling over here. Uphill.