ruminations on my mother

[lauralh]

I'm not exactly sure when my parents got together, but they got married for real at age 21. Three years later my brother was born, then four years later I was. And so on and so forth till they had five of us. She wanted all of us, too. I guess I can't totally factor out religion, but I know she wanted kids even before getting into that shit.

I never knew her father, but I did know her mother. Thinking about it, it wouldn't have surprised me to find out that she didn't want to have kids at all. She was affectionate but never warm to her grandchildren, especially after they reached a certain age. As far as I remember, she was still a teenager when her first child was born. (My mother was born ten years later.) Maybe she was one of those women who is delighted to have a baby but when it starts to get older, is disgusted. I'm sure, also, that years of being a school teacher (second grade level) didn't really help her like kids any more.

From my mother I know that her father wanted a son, and he treated her as his son rather than another daughter. This also probably disgusted her mother. They never seemed close, and she despised my father as well. So I'm guessing that this lovely atmosphere was what made my mother want to create her own family. But it backfired on her, because you just can't give as much attention to four or five kids as you can to two or three. My older brother and I resented the situation on some level and got out as soon as we possibly could. The younger ones didn't have anything else to compare it to, though, and still live at home. So maybe she got what she wanted, after all.

Comments

[buckylea.livejournal.com]

ah, family. we had another episode tonight. my dad turned his nose up at the dinner my mum had prepared, and some nice 'converstaion' ensued. i told him it isn't just mum who thinks he's rude, it's all of us. so, he stormed out, muttering things about playing second fiddle to a computer game, which is actually highly ironic seeing as he's the porn fiend. i feel kinda bad though, cos i said something about his porn habit in front of my little sister. i think that really disturbed her.
anyway.
so we have 4 kids, all girls, but one is already moved out, and a second is about to go. and i think in a way it relieves some of the tension... makes the cash flow a bit easier, reduces some of the tension. but on the other hand it makes things a shitload worse. because now there's just me and jen. and i do not like my dad. and she's the youngest, so she holds no power whatsoever. and we're both pretty crap at comforting my mum. so, it's all kinda shitty. i wonder at what point my mum will a)leave him or b) have some kind of breakdown.
it's kinda scary.

(sorry. i didn't mean to go all $100-an-hour therapy on yo' ass).

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

no problem... I know how it is. one of many reasons I left home at 16...