what I want to be like as a mom

My sister and I talk several times a week, but yesterday she called because she very specifically wanted to tell me that our mom loves me, and had said so the other night on the phone with her. This left me rather cold though, and I've been thinking about it ever since. I don't understand.

My mother is not warm and fuzzy. She was the type of mother that required you to be bleeding out your eyeballs before she'd believe you were sick. And she doesn't like weakness. My sister and I can never live up to her expectations. I can't even begin to imagine what they are because we are both pretty freaking well adjusted.

I envy people who want nothing more than their mothers when something goes wrong. My mom is the LAST person I would call.

I've made a few efforts over the years to try and change the relationship. I've been kind of like Bart Simpson in that Butterfingers commercial, you know the one where he keeps getting zapped when he reaches out for the candy bar but he just keeps doing it? incapable of learning.

I reach out to her but it always comes back to bite me in the butt, and I regret putting myself out there like that.

For example, I called home back in January of 2008 and asked for input into the question of whether or not to have kids. I thought it was a really nice conversation. And then when I called in October 2008 to tell them I was pregnant, I was really scared, but it went really well, basically.

But then I had the miscarriage and it all fell apart. My parents didn't handle it well at all, or rather, they just didn't handle it. No real reaction, no sympathy, no nothing really. In fact, a few weeks later when we were on the phone my mom did ask how I was healing and I told her that I was going to the doctor that day b/c I was bleeding again, and heavy, and it was rather early for it to be a period. I was worried. She told me, "well welcome to peri-menopause!"

This is not what you tell a woman who is trying to have a baby and just miscarried. Seriously the wrong thing to say.

I called her back later that day and told her that what she said was really mean. She was so shocked that I called her on it that she didn't say much of anything. But a week or so later she had turned it into one of those, "I'm sorry you were offended" things. I really hate that. It always ends up being about how I'm too sensitive.

My husband left town for several months right after the miscarriage. So that unfortunately left me all alone, and I was really, really not ok. I went into a pretty serious depression. The original plan had been that I'd spend christmas with my parents, but I just couldn't muster the emotional energy to deal with my mother. So I canceled about a month before (never bought my ticket actually). I never called home.

Now my dad is a psychiatrist, so you might have thought that my reclusive behavior would have been a sign. I had even called my sister and begged her to come out to see me. She did. She rocks. But she couldn't stay long b/c she's got a husband and kids and they needed her.

My parents never called to say they were worried about me. They never checked on me. In fact, much later my mom made some comment about how upset SHE had been but that she couldn't talk to any of her friends b/c I hadn't yet wanted to announce my pregnancy (it was only 7 weeks).

Did you catch that? SHE WAS UPSET AND HAD NO ONE TO TALK TO.

I feel a lot better now, and somehow worked my way out of the depression over the last year. I'm finally feeling pretty good and don't cry at the drop of the hat.

But I'm really angry that my mother can't just be a mom. I would have done ANYTHING to have her tell me that it really sucked but that it will be ok, and maybe even cry a little with me. Maybe even just a phone call every now and then to tell me she was thinking about me.

But no, she called me perimenopausal, and made a point to tell me about her friend who is so weak that she still talks about a miscarriage she had many years ago. Nice.

So this is one of the things I think a lot about when I think of having a baby.

I would do everything in my power to make my child know that I loved them no matter what. I would want them to know that no one has a perfect life, that family loves you through good and bad and doesn't think the less of you when things don't go perfectly. That's life. And love, true love is when you love someone even more because you can understand their problems, making it all the more rich when good things happen. I WILL COME RUNNING IF THEY EVER NEED ME. And I will work really hard to know when that might be, even if they can't say it. I really, really want to be one of those warm and fuzzy moms.