Member-only story
I’m Old Enough to Take My Mother’s Advice
My AARP punchcard has a hole in it
“If you can’t change the thing, change the way it affects you.”
Mom’s always saying that whenever I’m driving off the rails. We have extremely different temperaments. Unlike me, she doesn’t get rattled, she gets quiet.
Historically, this advice annoyed me. It was something her stoic Norwegian father (my grandfather) told her, and it’s her go-to. Mom is more like her father — an anchored brick house in a hurricane. If Mom and grandpa were dogs, you might say they were “hard to read.”
In the past, this advice felt useless to me. l was on fire and she was room temperature. How could she know what it felt like to be hot-blooded? How could her advice apply to me?
Her advice felt like one of those ridiculous signs people hang over their toilets. Stay Calm and Carry on. British advice doesn’t work on me. I’m not a stiff upper lip kind of gal. I also don’t want advice in the bathroom. I want dim, flattering, above-the-sink lighting and excellent pop culture magazines that I’d never read in public.
If I were a dog, a trainer might label me “reactive.” Like a Pittbull or a German Shephard. I’m no Golden Retriever.
