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donkeysanddug · 11 years ago

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A Christmas Carol for Mrs. Riddler

As focused and direct as the Riddler can be, Mrs. Riddler, my mother, can be the opposite. They are an unlikely couple. The Riddler’s world is built on rules, black and white conditions[1] and absolutes. His world may not contain anyone else’s rules, conditions or absolutes, but his world is dominated by his set of rules and only his set of rules. Now, with that said, “yes”, he does have some flexibility in his world and he is a creative problem solver but his core being is rules based.

My mom? Well, let’s just say her black and white world is considerably fuzzier and is full of potential distractions. There is a right and wrong in her world but her world is one that she’s comfortable with modifying when needed. She has her own strange and creative realm and she treats people the way she thinks is most fair to treat them as opposed to treating them all equally and from the same perspective. Everyone and everything is different in my mom’s world and she changes her thinking to align with people. Now, this doesn’t mean she isn’t strong or confident. Actually, the exact opposite is true. She sees this flexibility as her greatest strength.

While I was growing up she gave me a set of liberties that my older siblings[2] didn’t get to enjoy. For example, I didn’t have a curfew. She was never concerned about me not working or having a job. She never even worried about me having something to do. She just allowed me to wander through my childhood, adolescent, teenage and early adult years as I saw fit. If I wanted to sit and watch a spider crawl up the wall, she just let me be and once, in fact, allowed me to sit in my room all day watching a spider as opposed to making me go to school[3]. As I got older, but probably not wiser, this difference in parental approaches used on each child became more and more apparent. Eventually, I asked her, “Why don’t I have a curfew when everyone else does?”

She didn’t even have to think about the answer for a second. She said, “Oh. I knew you would never obey it. You would have broken it the night I gave you one. I also knew you that you were probably going to smoke pot. You’re too curious and I figured that telling you not to smoke it would just drive you to it. Plus, I knew your friends really well. I knew they all had curfews. Once they all went home I knew that you would probably get bored and come home as well.” I wasn’t stunned because, frankly, nothing really stuns me about her. Then she finished up her answer with, “It never made sense to me to give you a bunch of rules. I knew you’d never follow them and then we’d both have to deal with the consequences of that.” That didn’t really stun me either. Knowing her, it was the perfect and most predictable answer.

I remember those easy times and conversations with her. During those moments we didn’t need or require anything of each other. She would wait up, well past 2:00AM, for me to come home and then we’d sit at the table, with a soft yellow light surrounding us and we would do the daily cross word puzzle. We did this even on those nights when I couldn’t focus my eyes on the newspaper. She would somehow know when I needed a couple of bucks without me asking. She’d wake me up when she knew I was at risk of missing something that was important to me. She’d sit in the tree with me after I’d help her hang the clothes on the clothesline in the backyard. We’d talk politics, about literature, gardening and even about the Cleveland Indians[4]. All fine and good memories of my youth and she was someone that I always had time for.

However, as I've gotten older I sometimes lose my patience with her. I’ve had to give her the code for my garage door at least fifty times. I’ve had to deal with her telling me she’s “too busy” to do something but when I ask, “What are you doing?” she says, “Oh. Nothing”. I’ve had to rip her house apart trying to find the cat food when she’s been out of town (one time it was in the clothes dryer…wtf?). She’s still sharp as a tack and could discuss the failures of postmodernism with a perfect stranger, but now her lack of organization now frustrates me whereas it never did in the past.

Even today, I sit here, crazed. She started a conversation at Thanksgiving with “Can you do me a favor? I think you’re the only one that could do this for me.” As a Christmas gift she’s making a book of all the poems, pictures, scribbles, drawings, articles, paintings[5] and artwork that my brother, sister and I made as kids. It hasn’t been an easy activity. She has no idea which kid wrote which poem, painted which painting or scribbled which crayon abortion. She’s distracted by each drawing the moment she picks it up. She can’t always keep her hands steady when she takes a picture of it. She lets her shadow interfere with the picture as she takes it. She has no computer skills. She can’t type. As she giggles away and gushes over each scrawled poem that she finds, I feel like I’m herding a thousand cats. The ticking of the clock seems to pound into my ears as we organize, re-organize and then organize again, what seems like an endless pile of papers.

It has been and will be hours and hours of work and I’m tempted to just do it all and simply make my own Christmas gift. But, she’s reliving my past, Weaver’s past, Moo Moo’s past and I have to just suck it up and turn on some Christmas Carols. I need to realize that we each get treated differently, get asked to do different things and that her ask for me, right now at this point in time, is to help her see her vision turn into a reality.

[1] Thus, his literal color blindness suits him well.

[2] I’m the baby of the family

[3] I was in fourth grade

[4] But I was on my own when it came to making dinner.

[5] Although the painting I did of a greedy Jesus holding $5 bills didn’t make the cut for a variety of reasons.

#christmas #christmas story #doitformom #riddler #mrs riddler #merrychristmasmom

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