Momma, can you Hear me?

The relationship between mothers and daughters is tenuous at best. At the root of it is that both mothers and daughters assume different roles at different stages in life.  At times my mother has been my enemy, my protector, my enabler, my friend, my prison guard, my co-worker, my gossip buddy, my evil twin, my partner, a stranger and everything in between.  I'm sure she has seen me as everything under the sun from an innocent child to a brazen hussy to a complete failure at everything to a success at everything I touch. 

My mother is the queen of hindsight and the queen of blissful ignorance and the queen of I-hat-you-today-and-love-you-tomorrow-let's-never-talk-about-that-again. It can be a bit hard to keep up, especially when you are out of practise.  

A couple of weeks after I got home my mother and I got in a big row and I kicked her out of the house.  We both stewed it over for a few hours and in the end she called and apologized. Case closed. Hurtful words successfully swept under the carpet and forgotten. Well, for her at least. 

Her words have clouded every conversation I've had in the last two weeks. This time for some reason, her cruel words were not as easy to shake. 

Then today we had a conversation.  Innocent enough.  Nothing new or interesting was said really.  I said I was having a hard time finding a job and that I was sick again.  She said I shouldn't have gone to Vancouver because I always come home sick and that I shouldn't have quit my job in December. (See what I mean about Queen of hindsight?) So I innocently said, stop criticizing me when I am depressed. And she was all apologetic and sweet. She said she didn't realize she had been criticizing me and then asked me if I needed some money. 

All these years, I've tried all these underhanded, backwards ways of teeling her things or how I feel and now I realize that all she needed was a basic direct approach.  Be nice to me, I already feel bad enough! 

Boy that would have saved me gallons of tears if I had figured that out 15 years ago!