Hey, let me tell you of a non-skydiving revelation I had this weekend. I feel like such a shit that I feel the need to air this out. I’ll try to be brief, but I know I won’t be successful. The only reason I feel justified about posting this here is because I AM an experienced skydiver, and the BASE Board is an even less appropriate forum. My mom and I have not had the greatest of relationships. I am embarrassed even to say that, given some of the horror stories that are out there about rotten parents. The grudge I carried was all out of proportion to the past. There was no physical abuse, no verbal that I recall. Yeah, maybe she has never apologized for anything to me. Maybe she doesn’t recall the 2 or 3 times I recall her calling me “stupid.” Big gawdamn deal. I could have been treated one hell of a lot worse by a divorced woman raising two sons, someone who had to go back to college at the age of 40 to get some minimal job training, someone who had to also manage a large house, scrape together money for improvements to the house, etc. Looking back I had it pretty good. Did I mention that I lived at home rent free till I was 22? No? Yeah, swear to god. Basically I was carrying around a bunch of teen angst that never went away. Probably it was a little deeper than that, but right now that is all I can point to. A couple years after I moved out I found out my mom had cancer. The outlook was good, but it was still scary. Despite that, I am ashamed to say that this only improved our relationship up to about a 7. After she found out that had the cancer pretty much beat, she followed through on her post-retirement plans and moved up north. This was almost a non-event for me. Instead of her being 40 miles away and hardly talking to her, now she would be 400 miles or so away, and I would hardly talk to her. If I use the word “hardly” post cancer, you can imagine the lack of communication before hand. Went to visit her a couple times. Tried to be nice, and was fairly successful. However, I had the first inkling that I was a shit-head when I found myself stuck up there a couple extra days because my car broke down. I was very pissed that the “fun” half of my vacation had gone out the fricken window. My mom asked me if my staying the extra couple days meant that I wouldn’t be coming up for Thanksgiving in about 4 months……. I was shocked. Not that she was right, I HAD still planned on coming up (I am not a TOTAL asshole). However, she had somehow seen that that was pretty much how I viewed time spent with her, as a chore. I guess that was the start of my departure from the land of dick-heads. Went up there a few more times over the past year. This Thanksgiving the whole picture hit me. Taken one event at a time, I hadn’t seen anything too wrong with how I had been. After all, I WAS much nicer than I had been 10 years ago. However, seeing the big picture of how the whole thing had evolved, and the sheer irrationality of the grudge I had been carrying… I felt like crying. It was probably because I was a little baked (the fact that I feel the need to be somewhat high to deal with my mom indicates the depths of my depravity – but then again I feel that way about most people) that it hit me. I basically took a look around my surroundings, at the nice house and garden she had created, of the little nest-egg that she had put together in such a short time, and found that it didn’t fit the picture of my mom that I had in mind. THAT mom would probably be living in a crappy apartment somewhere, with crappy plastic furniture in a crappy kitchen that had two appliances, a crappy microwave and a crappy fridge. Picture Mickey’s mom in the movie Snatch….Well…..on second thought, a crooked gypsy that ends up dying in a fire set by an unhinged pig farmer is going too far, but you get the general idea that for a long time I did not consider my mom to be Carol Brady. All that came down on me, and the next realization made it all worse. My mom drives like hell. She has developed the old person digital driving technique. All gas, no gas. All breaks, no breaks. In a way she even steers like that. Her hearing is gone. The TV is LOUD. Also, she is dealing with all the old lady issues – osteoporosis, bad hip, etc. We went to a national park this weekend and she had some trouble negotiating the 200 yards of slightly hilly paths there. All I could think is that in a few years, she would probably need a wheelchair to make the same trek. Basically, I am realizing that within 4 -5 years, hard choices are going to have to be made. I don’t think I will have much in the way of help from my brother. It is so hard to face the fact that I have been SO blind, and inconsiderate, and just not there for her at all. So, even though she may be a bit of an opinionated semi-redneck that continually complains about how stupid everything is now, I finally realize how much she did for me and how much she loves me even if she never says it, and how much better she deserves to be treated. The fact that it took till age 30 to realize this is depressing as hell, but at least there is still time. It has also made me realize that if I treated my own mother like that, and looked down at her like I did, I must be treating everyone else I know at least as poorly [that actually explains a LOT about me and my relationships]. So I guess my revelation could (and should) be a life changer. So if the local DZ asshole seems a little nicer, think of this. If you can apply any of this to your life, please do so. If you stuck it out and read the whole thing, you must not have too hard of a job. But thanks for the effort. I’m kinda tired. Think I’m gonna go home now.
