my mother the drama queen
I think I'm going through some kind of transition phase. I'm not entirely sure what it is that I want to change or what it is that is changing. I'm feeling very thoughtful all the time. I have this need to read philosophical books and have meaningful discussions and figure out what I want from life. Perhaps it is the big scary thirties approaching. Or maybe I'm finally growing up, you know, into an adult.
For a while I felt like I had given up so many of my dreams by settling down in this quiet countryside town. I also felt like I had given up some of my independence, because my mother gave me this house and I am in this position of wanting to live in my house the way I want and at the same time trying to step on eggshells around my mother to please her as well. I'm seeing me and fiancé finding jobs somewhere close and raising our family here. This little town may be boring but it is also safe and ideal for children. But I'm also seeing us packing up and moving abroad and settling down in perhaps France or Ireland or Canada even. At some point of my life I think I would've seen the latter as the right option to choose, the brave option. Now they both seem as good, different but just as viable.
I know these are things we don't have to decide for a while. But I've been thinking about them a lot. I've been setting boundaries as well. When I look back at my life, I've noticed that I have these phases when I've just had enough of something or the other and I begin to re-set the boundaries. This is the most recent one. I'm setting boundaries with my classmates, my teachers, myself and my mother.
I love my mother and we have always been very close. She is this extremely energetic person (bordering on OCD) who has child-like enthuasiasm over her hobbies and who gets so much done that you wouldn't even believe. She's in no way a traditional mother. She hates cooking and cleaning the house and has taken plenty of shortcuts in such things all through my life. Lately she's been really over the top with her enthusiasm. When she comes here for the weekend, she has always her calender full of visits with friends or another project to do with the renovation of this house (none of these projects are ever seen through to the finished state) and on Sunday when she reverses her car from the yard to the street we all let out this big sigh of relief and sit down all bewildered and exhausted. She is like a tornado that storms through our house, moving furniture and packing away stuff to the attic we'd actually like to use and exciting Daughter so much that she has hard time falling asleep and staying asleep for the next couple of nights. I love seeing her, but I just wish she would tune it down a notch. It almost seems like her behaviour is all manic, obsessive. I mean, she hates cleaning up with vengeance, but here if there isn't enough stuff for her to do, she'll clean the house from top to bottom. She is completely unable to sit still. Even when she has a cup of coffee, she'll walk around the room or leaf through a newspaper like she was fast forwarded. It's crazy.
Me and fiancé have talked a lot about setting some boundaries with her. Like I said it is difficult for me to set boundaries with her concerning the house, because I feel like it is still her house. I did not pay money for this place, so I don't feel like it is mine. And she continues to help us money-wise with the renovation, so I do think she deserves to have her say in how it should be done. I'd like to set some boundaries concerning the cleaning and the moving of furniture and stuff around, because it annoys me greatly that I can't find things because she has put them in a box and carried them upstairs, but I decided to start with the baby. Of all the boundary-issues with my mother, the baby is one thing we are in total control of and she has no say in how we like to raise her. So on Sunday morning I took up the issue of hysterical crying in context with visits from the grandmothers or visits to the grandparents' houses. We've already discussed this with fiancé's mother and she smiled and chuckled and promised to try to be calmer especially in the evenings. I figured my mother would take it the same way... not so much.
First she made fun of my concern that the baby was waking up in the middle of the night all hysterical, crying for over half an hour without stopping, refusing all consolation and even the bottle. She said that she was not taking the blame. I told her that we had this problem only when either of the grandmothers or fiancés sister was visiting. In other words when someone was giving constant attention to Daughter all day long, reading a book, playing with her, carrying her around, picking her up from her crib when she whimpers while asleep and so on. All this attention is a wonderful thing and I stressed it when I talked with my mother. I'm absolutely thrilled that Daughter's grandmothers are so excited to be grandmothers and that they come by so often. I love it that she gets to meet her aunt so often and hopefully grow a close relationship with her unlike my own relationship with my aunts. But also I'd love it if we could have all this and peaceful nights as well. So I asked if my mother thought it'd be possible for her to try to be a little calmer towards Daughter's bedtime, so that she wouldn't be all hyper by the time she was supposed to go to bed. I was all calm and nice and tried to explain where I was coming from as rationally as I could and as carefully as I could. Apparently I wasn't sensitive enough.
My mother started crying. Yes. I couldn't believe my eyes. She started crying and told me that she was feeling really hurt. I asked why, because I had not said she had done anything wrong, but simply asked her to try to be calmer in the evenings, so that we could see if that would help with the hysterics. She told me that she had thought we were glad that she came over, to which I said that of course we were. She then proceeded to cry some more and when I asked why she was taking it like this, she stood up and started packing her things. I think my mouth was hanging open at this point. Here I thought I was telling her what we had experienced and asking her opinion as well as assistance that we could change this undesirable outcome to better and she takes it as a personal insult. I told her that I wished she wouldn't leave like this and she proceeded to go outside and do something in the garden to calm herself, but even after she came back inside she wouldn't talk to me and left right after we had returned from voting in the municipal election. I asked my fiancé who heard our discussion if I had said something which could've set her off like that, but he just shook his head just as dumbstruck as I was.
My mother usually calls at least once a week, but so far she hasn't called at all this week. She's acting like a martyr. That is her way of dealing with arguments, but I'm still really baffled what I said and when asked she didn't tell me what it was that hurt her so much. I said so many times that she must have misunderstood something if she felt hurt, because nothing was intended that way. She just shrugged and told me that then she must have. She asked why I didn't take this up in a smaller scale first and I still don't understand what she meant by it. I've tried to tell her to not be so in the face and bouncy just before the baby is going to bed. I've told her that dozens of times, but she just doesn't listen to half of the things I say and then when she actually hears me, she gives me this temper tantrum and asks me why haven't I said something earlier if it bothers me, which makes me feel all frustrated because I have tried to do exactly that. I always thought that I was the emotional one in our family, but it seems like the roles have been reversed.
At first I felt really bad like I always do when something like this happens, but the more I thought about it, the clearer it came to me that this was something I needed to tell my mother. I needed to set a boundary and that I did and she probably got upset because I did it, not because of the way I did it. And if that is the case, it wouldn't have mattered if I had chosen my words differently. I'm not going to apologize from her, because I already did and she refused to listen and because I still don't know what I should apologize. I'm just waiting for her to come to her senses and contact us. Until then we are enjoying non-hysteric nights with the baby and a very calm and tornado-free home. Not entirely bad thing.
For a while I felt like I had given up so many of my dreams by settling down in this quiet countryside town. I also felt like I had given up some of my independence, because my mother gave me this house and I am in this position of wanting to live in my house the way I want and at the same time trying to step on eggshells around my mother to please her as well. I'm seeing me and fiancé finding jobs somewhere close and raising our family here. This little town may be boring but it is also safe and ideal for children. But I'm also seeing us packing up and moving abroad and settling down in perhaps France or Ireland or Canada even. At some point of my life I think I would've seen the latter as the right option to choose, the brave option. Now they both seem as good, different but just as viable.
I know these are things we don't have to decide for a while. But I've been thinking about them a lot. I've been setting boundaries as well. When I look back at my life, I've noticed that I have these phases when I've just had enough of something or the other and I begin to re-set the boundaries. This is the most recent one. I'm setting boundaries with my classmates, my teachers, myself and my mother.
I love my mother and we have always been very close. She is this extremely energetic person (bordering on OCD) who has child-like enthuasiasm over her hobbies and who gets so much done that you wouldn't even believe. She's in no way a traditional mother. She hates cooking and cleaning the house and has taken plenty of shortcuts in such things all through my life. Lately she's been really over the top with her enthusiasm. When she comes here for the weekend, she has always her calender full of visits with friends or another project to do with the renovation of this house (none of these projects are ever seen through to the finished state) and on Sunday when she reverses her car from the yard to the street we all let out this big sigh of relief and sit down all bewildered and exhausted. She is like a tornado that storms through our house, moving furniture and packing away stuff to the attic we'd actually like to use and exciting Daughter so much that she has hard time falling asleep and staying asleep for the next couple of nights. I love seeing her, but I just wish she would tune it down a notch. It almost seems like her behaviour is all manic, obsessive. I mean, she hates cleaning up with vengeance, but here if there isn't enough stuff for her to do, she'll clean the house from top to bottom. She is completely unable to sit still. Even when she has a cup of coffee, she'll walk around the room or leaf through a newspaper like she was fast forwarded. It's crazy.
Me and fiancé have talked a lot about setting some boundaries with her. Like I said it is difficult for me to set boundaries with her concerning the house, because I feel like it is still her house. I did not pay money for this place, so I don't feel like it is mine. And she continues to help us money-wise with the renovation, so I do think she deserves to have her say in how it should be done. I'd like to set some boundaries concerning the cleaning and the moving of furniture and stuff around, because it annoys me greatly that I can't find things because she has put them in a box and carried them upstairs, but I decided to start with the baby. Of all the boundary-issues with my mother, the baby is one thing we are in total control of and she has no say in how we like to raise her. So on Sunday morning I took up the issue of hysterical crying in context with visits from the grandmothers or visits to the grandparents' houses. We've already discussed this with fiancé's mother and she smiled and chuckled and promised to try to be calmer especially in the evenings. I figured my mother would take it the same way... not so much.
First she made fun of my concern that the baby was waking up in the middle of the night all hysterical, crying for over half an hour without stopping, refusing all consolation and even the bottle. She said that she was not taking the blame. I told her that we had this problem only when either of the grandmothers or fiancés sister was visiting. In other words when someone was giving constant attention to Daughter all day long, reading a book, playing with her, carrying her around, picking her up from her crib when she whimpers while asleep and so on. All this attention is a wonderful thing and I stressed it when I talked with my mother. I'm absolutely thrilled that Daughter's grandmothers are so excited to be grandmothers and that they come by so often. I love it that she gets to meet her aunt so often and hopefully grow a close relationship with her unlike my own relationship with my aunts. But also I'd love it if we could have all this and peaceful nights as well. So I asked if my mother thought it'd be possible for her to try to be a little calmer towards Daughter's bedtime, so that she wouldn't be all hyper by the time she was supposed to go to bed. I was all calm and nice and tried to explain where I was coming from as rationally as I could and as carefully as I could. Apparently I wasn't sensitive enough.
My mother started crying. Yes. I couldn't believe my eyes. She started crying and told me that she was feeling really hurt. I asked why, because I had not said she had done anything wrong, but simply asked her to try to be calmer in the evenings, so that we could see if that would help with the hysterics. She told me that she had thought we were glad that she came over, to which I said that of course we were. She then proceeded to cry some more and when I asked why she was taking it like this, she stood up and started packing her things. I think my mouth was hanging open at this point. Here I thought I was telling her what we had experienced and asking her opinion as well as assistance that we could change this undesirable outcome to better and she takes it as a personal insult. I told her that I wished she wouldn't leave like this and she proceeded to go outside and do something in the garden to calm herself, but even after she came back inside she wouldn't talk to me and left right after we had returned from voting in the municipal election. I asked my fiancé who heard our discussion if I had said something which could've set her off like that, but he just shook his head just as dumbstruck as I was.
My mother usually calls at least once a week, but so far she hasn't called at all this week. She's acting like a martyr. That is her way of dealing with arguments, but I'm still really baffled what I said and when asked she didn't tell me what it was that hurt her so much. I said so many times that she must have misunderstood something if she felt hurt, because nothing was intended that way. She just shrugged and told me that then she must have. She asked why I didn't take this up in a smaller scale first and I still don't understand what she meant by it. I've tried to tell her to not be so in the face and bouncy just before the baby is going to bed. I've told her that dozens of times, but she just doesn't listen to half of the things I say and then when she actually hears me, she gives me this temper tantrum and asks me why haven't I said something earlier if it bothers me, which makes me feel all frustrated because I have tried to do exactly that. I always thought that I was the emotional one in our family, but it seems like the roles have been reversed.
At first I felt really bad like I always do when something like this happens, but the more I thought about it, the clearer it came to me that this was something I needed to tell my mother. I needed to set a boundary and that I did and she probably got upset because I did it, not because of the way I did it. And if that is the case, it wouldn't have mattered if I had chosen my words differently. I'm not going to apologize from her, because I already did and she refused to listen and because I still don't know what I should apologize. I'm just waiting for her to come to her senses and contact us. Until then we are enjoying non-hysteric nights with the baby and a very calm and tornado-free home. Not entirely bad thing.