Flash

WHY BOTHER?

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Rochelle @ Friday Fictioneers
has offered up another photo prompt;
this is my 100-word response.

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

My mother was coming for a visit – just a couple of hours but enough time to give my house the once-over.

I gave up long ago trying to please Mom or meet her unreasonable expectations; nothing I did made her happy or proud so why even bother? Now that I was a mom, spending time with my kids was more important than keeping an immaculate house.

To my surprise, the afternoon with Mom was delightful. As she was leaving, she walked by the pile of shoes in my mudroom and announced with a huff, “Nancy, you are such a disappointment.”

NAR © 2023
100 Words

8 December 2023

This is “Motherless Child” by Eric Clapton

72 thoughts on “WHY BOTHER?”

  1. I’ve also always been a disappointment. I had to learn it wasn’t actually about me. It’s not about you either. It’s about her unrealistic expectations, which are probably expectations she also put on herself. Some people struggle with accepting that the real world doesn’t fit with the picture they have in their heads.

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    1. The more I write about this topic the more I meet amazing people who had similar childhoods. It’s sad that it’s so common but it’s also somewhat comforting knowing I wasn’t alone. Misery loves company and all that.
      Thanks for your excellent and thoughtful comments, Iris!

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  2. Well-told story. I’m sorry to hear it’s true. Moms of a certain generation were raised to be dutiful and obligated and keeping a clean house was a badge of honor – but at what cost? But, moms are people and people are flawed. I’m glad you were able to travel on a different path.

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  3. There is no pleasing some people. I think children generally seek their parents’ approval, while parents generally hold unrealistic expectations for their children. It’s the microcosm of the generational gap.

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  7. You’re story resonates deeply with me, Nancy. It has taken MANY mistakes and careful reconditioning to finally say I’ve minimized that amount of stuff that I pour onto my own adult children after having been raised by a mom like the one here.

    When I saw Eric Clapton and mothers I thought for sure the song was going to be Motherless Children. In a way having a b-mom is very much like being an orphan but often worse.

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    1. That’s a very thin line we have set for ourselves. It’s a bit like having been raised in a gulag, isn’t it?
      We used to call my mother “mama”; that has become a code, of sorts, which my husband will whisper when I start behaving like my mother. I have conditioned myself extremely well and he rarely is forced to say that word. Just like me, my children do not deserve that.
      Neither do you.

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  9. It’s tough when a parent is impossible to please. We seem to have a deep subconscious need for their approval, however irrational that might be. I feel for you. Your story shows the situation so well: after a surprisingly successful visit – the gut punch. Sad.

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    1. It’s more than tough, Margaret; it’s impossible. I stopped trying to please my mother 40 years ago; it was an exercise in futility. More than anything my stories are meant to reveal the detached and duty-driven woman she was. In retrospect, I feel sorry for her and the difficult life she led, her need to build walls around herself. I’ve said this many times before: the problem with walls is while they keep everything hurtful from getting in, nothing good or loving is allowed to get out. She’s been gone 15 years now and all I feel is sorry that her life was so hard. I truly feel nothing else. To any woman who has a mother who is warm and loving, someone you can talk to about anything without being judged, someone with whom you have a bond, I say you are truly blessed and fortunate. Don’t ignore that amazing bond.

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      2. Ah yes. Walls are never good. Boundaries, yes, but there’s a fine line between necessary boundaries that protect us and the walls you’re describing. I guess the best we can do is use these hurtful experiences to show us another, better way to be parents ourselves. But even so, there’s no escaping that hurt. It becomes part of who we are. Times when families get together, like Christmas, bring back all the memories, don’t they? Good and not so good. Take care, and keep on writing about your mum. I’m the same with my dad – he’s always in there somewhere. I think it helps.

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        1. Thank you for your very kind and thoughtful words, Margaret. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me to grow up being nothing like my mother. I’m grateful I caught on at an early age and had the awareness to know never to treat my kids, my husband or myself as as she did.

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  10. A difficult story to read. But honestly…

    One day after the birth of our first child her mother was coming to “help.” Wife felt the need to clean the house. WTF?

    Dysfunctional is exactly that.

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    1. Oh Lord! Can I relate to that one! There are some couples who happily look forward to a visit from their parents to spend time with the new baby and to help out in some way. We dreaded that visit knowing everything we did would be wrong and only mother knew how to do it right. It was a nightmare of a visit!

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  11. Nancy what a beautifully written story. It is difficult to get things down to 100 words which you did so beautifully. If there is any truth to this however this tugs at my heartstrings. You are extremely talented and beautiful on the inside and out. I know some women whose mothers were actually jealous of their children. Sad but true. We need our mother’s love and what you described must have felt like needles in your heart. I am so sorry. Big hugs and love ❤️ 🦋🌹❤️

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    1. Thank you, dear Joni. Life was very difficult for my mother. She was deprived of her own childhood, dropping out of school at age 12 to be the caregiver for her ailing mother. She took over many responsibilities and had no time for the fun things a young girl should enjoy. Caring and doing for other people became her goal in life, her “duty” and not an act of love. Mother did the best she could and showed her love by keeping a spotless home, sewing incredible clothes for us, cooking great meals but never allowing her guard to slip for one minute to show her emotions or to say “I love you”. She was not a bad person; she was misguided and afraid of getting hurt. She built walls. While walls keep pain and hurt from getting in, they also keep emotions and feelings from getting out. Thanks so much for your comments, Joni.

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  20. Her glasses so smudged by her own disappointment in herself.
    She musta had some mighty (unfulfilled) dreams for her own self, eh? Someone who banged on her self-esteem as an expression of love. Ah, inheritance!

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  21. It is thought that this song stemmed from an escaped slave named Harriet Jacobs whose autobiography Incidents in the “Life of a Slave Girl” was published in 1861. She wrote, “On one of those sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town. Before night her children were all far away. She begged the trader to tell her where he intended to take them; this he refused to do.”

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  25. That has the ring of truth in there though my mum didn’t criticise me after I was married I certainly didn’t escape chiding when younger or a teenager!
    Mum always said to me spend time with the children the dust will still be there when you’re dead and gone!
    It was my mother in law who I had to clean up for …she was very critical. 😁💜

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      1. Mine was a very interesting woman she lived to 100 and got a card from the Queen. She would of loved longer but she caught covid and it went to her brain . Sheer willpower and being self centered kept her alive …. I have to admire her.💜💜

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  30. Expectations of a “dream child”… no wonder the syndrome of parents transferring to their children all their unfulfilled baggage is named as such.
    Unfortunately, a common theme, cara.

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