Mom busied herself with unpacking boxes. In truth, she had wanted something much larger; her buffet, table, couch, and chairs barely fit into this thing, even though it was slightly wider than most units of its kind. Although for years she had stood in line for commodities to make ends meet, she had fancied herself living grandly in at least a double wide. The days of not worrying about money had moved out with husband #2, but perhaps she should have gotten the Grecian tub option.  At least the place was clean and had that brand-new smell. Mom had always been an obsessive cleaner. Her mantra had been “There’s a place for everything and everything has its place.” Her new house was as neat as a pin, however neat that is. Everything was exactly where it should be. There was a certain comfort with order and control.

As for me, I thought that getting her out of our home into one of her own would give me some breathing time. Her constant hovering drove me nuts, as well as her compulsively having to put everything away immediately, of never allowing any task to wait, and of incessantly needing to be doing something to be helpful. She would work outside until her back ached so badly she couldn’t straighten up, but would get mad at me if I pleaded with her to stop. Admittedly, my garden and house never looked better, but I felt I couldn’t be comfortable in my own home. I felt like the little girl being told to clean up her room, “or I’ll do it for you.”

But things didn’t settle down just because we each had our own space. There was an assortment of details to deal with: changing addresses, getting a bank account, transferring funds, filling out forms and filing them, putting the old place up for sale. She refused to deal with any of these things.

What happened to my mother, the competent, can-do, independent woman I always looked up to? I was still living in my messy bedroom. She had been, I suddenly realized, perfectly willing, albeit with some resentment, to let men control her life for the past 40 years. In that time, I had grown up and moved away.

I sat there looking at this person I wasn’t so sure I knew all that well. She smoked a lot; drank pot after pot of coffee, even late at night (in fact, I think that’s all she drank), and poured a ton of salt on things, which I highly suspected she did purposefully to get my reaction, knowing I was an anti-sodium, vitamin-popping, wheat-germ-and-granola fanatic. I found myself repeating things to her a lot, not because she was hard of hearing, but because she wasn’t listening - just lost in her own world of thoughts - or maybe she didn’t remember because she wasn’t really paying attention. I was getting a little impatient. We were trying to work through some of this stuff, important stuff, and she couldn’t seem to remember from one day to the next how much money was where and why or where to find information we needed to move forward. Finally, she blew up at me, telling me I was treating her like a child and being overly critical.

It was one of those “ah ha” moments. I was going to have to step up and also step back.

The timing was really bad. I was going through my usual depression after taking my son back to live with his father for the winter, which was an 11-hour drive, one way, if the passes were clear. I would possibly see him at Christmas, if my ex was willing; he controlled visitations. I had already spent my children’s college education funds on attorneys who did not protect my interests; I could not afford to go back down that road.

My partner of nearly 10 years was recovering from a severe Crohn’s attack, true, but our relationship had been on very shaky ground and wasn’t getting any better. It was probably just as well we hadn’t legalized anything. 

Plus, I had been recently diagnosed with a different sort of auto-immune disorder: rheumatoid arthritis; I was also clinically anemic. And did I mention, a pathetic workaholic. I was working an extremely stressful job that required a lot of overtime, once logging in 48 hours in just 3 days in trying to meet some deliverable that must have been critical at the time but which now is not even memorable. It was a demoralizing position; I felt completely unappreciated and underpaid; but at least it allowed me to help my kids get through school and help my mother have a place to live.

When things get hard, I have a tendency to add one more thing to make them nearly impossible. I don’t know what I was thinking when I decided to go back to school to get my Master’s degree before I turned 50. It was a distance-learning program, which had the advantage of allowing me to work at my own pace, but the disadvantage of everything taking longer because you don’t move up until you are ready - and I was never ready. If you don’t do your very best, what is the point? “Good enough” did not exist in my world. And by the same token, like my whole life, nothing was ever good enough. My room was still a mess.

In writing this, I realize I was a lot like my mother. 

I was lonely, depressed, and felt my best friend had abandoned me. Overwhelmed with everything going on, I managed to function day to day with little sleep, consumed with work and obligations.

It is like a spiraling whirlpool. As long as you’re looking down the center, you think you’re looking straight ahead.

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