I Broke Up With My Mother

I broke up with my mother. It just wasn’t working out. I should have done it years ago, but given that it was my first relationship — codependent from the moment we met in 1972 on a hot August day in New York — it just wasn’t that easy to do. In the beginning she really got me. And I wasn’t easy to get. I had a lot of shit to deal with. And I was deeply selfish, I own that. But she was too. The fact is we were both too young: she was 19 and I, well, I was so immature. I couldn’t even stand on my own two feet. Neither of us really knew what we were doing. I will say she did pride herself on being fully committed to her own personal growth. Though if I’m being honest, I think more often than not she used it as an excuse. Like one time I asked her why we only ever had pumpernickel bread, Marshmallow Fluff, and Tang in the fridge.

“I’m evolving,” was her answer.

Why couldn’t she have just gone out and bought fish sticks? I never understood the need to constantly introspect. Her personal bible was ‘I’m O.K. You’re O.K.’ Every time we had an issue she would rifle through the pages urgently seeking a way to make herself OK, me OK, her OK in relation to me, and me OK with how she made herself OK in relation to me. All I wanted half the time was a decent meal.

No amount of transactional analysis, however, could justify the revolving door of men in an out of our 700 square foot apartment on East 70th street. So many leisure suits. In our living room. On the blue brocade sofa. On top of my mother. I did not understand it. I did not like it. The noises woke me up — the legs of the sofa squeaking along the parquet floor — constipated grunts — muffled screams. I started to feel completely abandoned by her. Instead of acknowledging her deeply inappropriate, borderline illegal behavior, however, she proposed a way to reconcile our home life with her sex life:

“Let’s be friends!”

Though my instincts suggested our relationship should be something more, I desperately wanted her in my life. So I accepted the proposal. After all, my peers had so many rules and restrictions in their relationships. But not me. I was living in Manhattan in the height of the disco era with my own key, I could come and go as I pleased. I felt so adult. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized I didn’t need a groovy gal pal (who rejoiced in constantly being asked if she was my older sister), I actually needed a parent. My dad, who she divorced when I was two, couldn’t be expected to show up consistently — he had a full time job eluding his multiple gambling debts.

When I was nine, she met her second husband, a man who harbored both dreams of stardom and a pet boa constrictor named Winchell. We all moved to Los Angeles. He left within a year after one too many sunburns, but my mother decided we would stay. The lifestyle appealed to her. She discovered exercise, and finally found, amid the palm trees and smog, the one tangible thing that gave her a true and enduring sense of self worth: money.

Not surprisingly, she met her third husband, a narcissistic talent agent, while jogging on the bluffs in Santa Monica. They became a power couple, a match made in Hollywood, one that seemed to coincide with, or perhaps spearhead, each of their professional ascensions. Soon after their wedding, the Agent started representing some of the biggest stars in Hollywood while my mom’s executive search business exploded, turning her into ‘Headhunter to the Studios.’

In my early twenties I got hit with a wicked flu the same week as the Oscars. Sick as a dog and in desperate need of care, my mother showed up at my front door wearing a blue bandana around her face, a wide-brimmed straw hat, Jackie-O sunglasses and yellow dish gloves. Yes, yellow dish gloves. The second I opened the door she shoved a brown paper bag in my face and, sucking in a deep breath, uttered “Here. I can’t afford to get sick,” then exhaled and ran. In the bag I found store-bought matzo-ball soup and Robitussin. She was Oscar bound, and nothing — certainly not her only child’s meager bout with ebola — was going to stop her. She was on a holy pilgrimage to The Red Carpet.

Around this time I finally began to understand that unless maternal instinct was on sale at Armani, she was never going to have it. Rather than bailing though, I chose to accept what I called our Chinatown relationship; I had visions of grabbing her by the shoulders, slapping her, trying to get her to admit the true nature of our connection:

“You’re my sister!” Slap!

“You’re my daughter” Slap!

“My sister!” Slap!

“My daughter!” Slap!

“I know Jack Nicholson personally!” Slap!

“I have the body of a supermodel!” Slap!

“The face of Ava Gardner!” Slap!

“I’m evolving!” Slap!

Admittedly, humor was an analgesic, often the only thing that kept me from ending things sooner. And I will say my mother’s ability to laugh at herself remains one of her most redeeming qualities.

It wasn’t until I had a family of my own, however — husband, two kids, Volvo, house on cul de sac — that I saw how unhealthy our dynamic really was. I saw it in how she related to my kids: on one hand she took them every Tuesday and showered them with praise and love, but on the other hand, in an effort to protect her pristine, all white ‘dream house’, she made them use so much hand sanitizer they were convinced “Purell” was an active verb. I saw it in how she loved my son’s imaginative nature yet insisted that that he learn Mandarin Chinese in order to secure his financial future. Or how she would look into my daughter’s eyes and say “You’re so beautiful, everyone says you look just like me.”

It also took me having my own children to register her competitive nature. She saw her trips to Target with my kids as wild adventures just for fun, slumming safaris, opportunities to flirt with colorful commoners and basement bargains — whereas she saw my visits to Target as a necessary function of our sad economic reality, forlorn treks down the aisles of generic wipes and affordable mediocrity.

And then one day at Costco, while perusing the grass-fed beef, she called my cell. I told her where I was and she laughed because being domestic is really funny. Then she mentioned cashmere, that she heard from an art-collector friend that Costco had quality inexpensive Italian cashmere sweaters on sale. So I headed over to the clothing area and indeed found said sweaters for $69.99. She asked for a black V-neck in Extra-Small and then told me that I should get myself two (her treat) one in an Extra-Large for my current weight and one in a Small for when I get back to my “best self.” Until that moment I was unaware that my “best self” was a SMALL in discount cashmere. And even though I was tempted as I had always been to accept this notion as truth, buy both sweaters, and stop eating cake, I knew the emotional weight was just too much to carry anymore. Though seemingly an innocuous statement, these words proved to be the final straw. As much as it pained me, I knew I had to let her go. A switch had gone off. It was as if forces greater than myself took over and without warning, I simply blurted it out.

“It’s over!

“What?”

“I want to break up!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want to. Break. Up.”

“Oh no — does David know?”

“Not with David. With you.”

“With me? What are you talking about?”

“I’m done.”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t just break up with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because. We’re not — I’m not — I mean, I’m your — you don’t break up — you…”

“It’s over, mom…You can still have the kids on Tuesdays.”

With that I hung up the phone and grabbed a black V-neck cashmere sweater in MEDIUM for myself. If my mother wanted a bargain, she would have to venture out to Costco amidst the unwashed rabble and push her own cart.

***

I think there’s a chance we can one day be friends. Maybe see a movie. My husband often tells me she’s doing the best she can. This may be accurate, strictly speaking. But at what point do you stop torturing yourself with someone’s ‘best’? Anyway, I have plenty of time to process. And life goes on. I’ve found great comfort and strength in the idea that from now on any time she forgets to show up, acts selfishly, or makes snide remarks, it won’t matter because I’ll just think to myself: She’s such a bitch. I’m so glad we’re not together anymore.