Let me tell you something about my mother.

Let me tell you something about my mother.

 

She really is more of a “Mom” than a “Barb.” I don’t think she’ll ever be a Barb to me. It feels so unnatural. Even my dad doesn’t always call her Barb. “Your mom,” maybe. My father is undoubtedly a John though, I can tell you that. They’re such different people, even in the aspect of having suitable names. I can’t think of a name that would fit my mother like a glove but Barb isn’t right. It doesn’t feel right. I guess it could be worse, much worse. Like if her name was Angela. There is not a chance in hell my mom could be an Angela. So Barb it is.

 

My mother is the kind of person who could argue for hours even if she has no idea what she’s talking about. She passed this mindless debating and heckling onto my brother. She spent the night in his dorm room over Moms Weekend and laughed about how even his friends knew he fought over nothing. I wonder if she can see it in herself or if she thinks it came out of nothing. Creationism. I saw a comic about computers and creationism on a e-mail attachment my uncle sent me and it irked me in a bizarrely intense way. I don’t know how people can actually blow off evolution, just like that. Like it wasn’t even something worth considering.

 

She’s like that, too. Some things just aren’t worth the time it takes to think it over for my mother. Like hosting co-ed sleepovers or getting a tattoo or taking my cat on a twenty-five-hundred mile road trip to come with me to college. Luckily for me, if she doesn’t get into argument attack-mode, she’s normally a very reasonable woman with relatively relaxed rules, as far as parents go. I can stay up late and go out almost whenever I want to and I can go anywhere I want without an adult, these days. Even going across the state alone isn’t a real problem for my mom.

 

I think my mom usually gets more frustrated with me over my indecisive nature. Making college choices has made this past year one of the most stressful, both for me and my mother. I didn’t know much of anything about what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go. I’m happy with my pick now, but I still feel that apprehension – did I make the right choice? I know she only yells at me because she wants me to pick what’s best for me. What makes me happy.

 

I have a very hard time accepting that she might want me to be happy. I’ve spent so many years fighting against her, even as a good kid. Good grades, never drank, never smoked, never swore – at least not in front of her – and we still managed to butt heads on a regular basis. The stupidest things. Nothing worth fighting over. Sometimes I hadn’t even done anything.

 

Once, when I was very young, my mom found a chunk of hair. I can’t remember if she picked it from there sink or the trash or off a counter or what, but she had it there, in her hand, as she began shooting her first bullets. That handful of dark, smooth hair crumbled in her fist, submitting to her strength and fury. That hypothetical question that wasn’t meant to get an answer; answers only commanded more rage – “Did you cut your own hair?”

 

No, of course I hadn’t. I must have been only four or five years old. I was a little girl. Little girls love having hair to brush and put up in ponytails like sophisticated big sisters do while putting on lip gloss and talking on the phone with their high school boyfriends. I would never have thought to do such a thing, cut off my hair before I could style it. This made no difference to my mother, on a rampage. I doubt I had the courage to muster up an argument. I’ve always had this odd tendency to look incredibly guilty upon hearing about bad things happening close to home. If my mom can’t find a bill in her wallet, I feel like I stole it and immediately begin to blush. When my brother would lose CDs, my face burst into flames. It must have been this chemical chain that drove my mother into a mass of angered hysterics resulting in me being sent to the corner of the dining room for a time-out, one of the only two I can ever remember.

 

The second was only second or third grade, and I didn’t do anything then, either. One of the third grade teachers at my elementary school looked eternally crabby and it was her that forced me to sit out fifteen minutes of my precious recess for something I didn’t do. I can hardly remember anymore. I feel like it had something to do with making piles of mulch just off the playground. We didn’t throw any mulch, just built piles. Suspicious piles, I suppose. Suspicious enough for me to be punished and feel like a horrible person.

 

And that same feeling is what made me cry and cry and cry back in the corner of my dining room, staring at the wallpaper. I had done nothing wrong but I must have deserved this all the same. Maybe my just existing warranted this sort of punishment. I didn’t need to move or act – my heart simply had to beat.

 

I may have never told my mother about this. Maybe I did. I also have a habit of making memories of things that never happened and smudging select ones that did, to make them feel more dreamlike than real. If I did tell her, she would have completely laughed it off and claimed to not remember a thing. Another habit – I’ll start laughing when I confront my mother about just about anything. Laugh or cry, cry or laugh. Cry more than laugh, these days.

 

I cried when I tried to tell her about my overeating problem. Maybe because she yelled at me, saying I ruined her birthday for not being hungry come dinner time. She couldn’t understand that some people think differently than her, in more ways than just being “weird” or “strange.”

 

“You should just stop when you’re full, like a normal person,” she’d say bitterly, in a voice louder than the one she used to talk about work.

 

“It’s not that easy for me to stop, Mom,” I’d tell her. “I just can’t do it, sometimes.”

 

Her reply would come quick and sound acidic, like a cobra, but if you took an extra second to analyze it, it would make no sense and the conversation would end.

 

I won’t miss those. But I will miss the challenge.