I could easily make every week’s post about what’s going on in Ukraine, but instead I’ll give us all a moment’s reprieve. Everyone’s devouring the daily news anyway, I’m sure, and the truth is, Putin’s atrocities are not unique. He’s not even the only despotic leader killing people right now. You can’t throw a dirty sock without hitting somebody abusing power, so today I’ll leave the global carnage to the journalists and focus on the more homegrown variety: Motherhood.
Age-appropriate
I recently found myself in the car with my two teenage kids. They were captive, and I was sort of randomly feeling a little wistful, treasuring their company.
Julius loves me but he doesn't much like me. He doesn't want to hang out with me, and that’s okay. Truth is, I don’t like talking about animé and ultimate frisbee enough to really want to spend that much time with him either. Plus, I don’t play Magic the Gathering. It’s all good.
Being in the car together that night felt weirdly kind of special, and it cracked something open a little bit. A vivid memory flashed in my mind of being a teen myself, in the passenger seat of our burgundy Dodge Aries K car, running weekend errands on Orchard Lake Road. I’d be punching the manual preset buttons on the radio, hoping to catch a Prince song1, but not one that’s too-embarrassingly dirty, while finding everything about my mom irritating. Everything. I didn't like the way she situated her foot on the gas pedal. She’d sort of wiggle her foot a little every time she put it on the gas pedal and it made me mental.
She annoyed me at all times, not just in the car. I didn’t like the way she waved her hands around when she talked. I didn’t like the way the NYT Sunday crossword was always in the bathroom. I didn’t like how she’d rub her bare feet together while we watched Knot’s Landing.
My mom was a great dresser, but I often became absurdly hostile to clothing choices she’d make. I remember once getting in a heated argument with her because she wanted to wear a chocolate brown silk blouse with white pants. The way I railed against her outfit choice, you’d have thought she was planning to walk out of the house with a swastika on her jacket. I know, now, that brown and white look good together. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I was quite a little turd.
So that night, in the dark car with my kids, that sensation of loving my mother yet simultaneously being repulsed and embarrassed by her surged through my neurons. Now I was the mother. My voice cracked with honesty as I spoke: “You know, I can remember being your age and driving around with my mom,” I said, staring out the windshield. “I found her so incredibly annoying. Everything she did bugged me. The way she chewed, the way she drove. I could barely stand to be in the same room with her sometimes.”
The car was silent for a moment as my kids seemed to hold their breath, not really sure what to do with this disclosure. My mom died 9 years ago and her name is only conjured in love, tribute, and fond reminiscence. Then Julius guffawed. In his short surprised laugh I heard relief.
“Really?” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “I kind of get that you probably feel the same way about me, too. And that’s okay,” I said. Julius laughed again. “Yea,” he said, “I do,” and laughed. Nothing tangible changed in the car just then, but I felt a shift in the energy all the same.
I guess it stung a little, but I liked that he admitted I made him cringe. I liked that he didn’t think he had to tell me what he thought I'd need to hear. It’s a strange luxury to be able to just be annoyed by the banalities of everyday life. It’s a comforting security for children to get to be impulsive and childish and know their parents will be there all the same. It’s our immense good fortune to not be running for our lives.
Slag heaps and weans
Shuggie Bain
This week I have only one book to recommend. It’s the best book I read last year, and considering I read about 6,578 books during the course of the pandemic, that’s saying something. Besides, I certainly gave you more than enough last week.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart is a heavily fictionalized version of the author’s own childhood with an alcoholic mother who died from her disease when he was still a teen. More than misery porn, it’s a work of literature about love itself. It’s a tough story and there were many points where the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that the narrator–ostensibly the author–has to survive because he lived to write the book.
Shuggie Bain is the youngest child of a charismatic catastrophe of a mother whose drinking is the central tragedy, but not the only one. His father is a cruel selfish cheat, and his seemingly stable grandmother harbors perhaps the most haunting tragedy of them all. It’s Glasgow in the 1980s, and everyone is suffering under Thatcherism. Shuggie’s personal torment is to endure his classmates, neighbors, and extended family who all find him “no right”—one of the countless Glaswegian bits of vernacular that make this book such an immersive experience. Some of it will make you feel like they’re not even speaking English, and some of it will slip into your own vocabulary; I’m still calling my kids my “weans.” I listened to this book and while it definitely made understanding the dialect tricky at first, hearing the musicality of the language heightened the experience for me.
I haven’t read many books that authentically pulse with emotion the way this one does. It’s not done in a manipulative or sentimental way. Stuart’s writing takes the specific and makes it universal. I felt so much love reading this book: his mother’s love for her kids, tragically eclipsed by her addiction; Shuggie’s siblings’ best efforts to care for their kid brother yet survive themselves; and most of all, Shuggie’s love for his mom despite it all.
This isn’t a life-affirming tale to make you feel better about the world, or a satisfying reflection of lives not unlike our own. It left me gutted, weepy, and grateful. With its unflinching portrayal of a mother ruined by alcoholism and her sweet son stranded in the devastation she has wrought, the novel captures the ineffable immensity of love itself.
The author’s personal story is marvelous, too. He’s had a huge career in fashion as the artistic director for many major brands like Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren, and he wrote this book in stolen moments during business travel for his job.
Some rad new lingo that’s really def
The Scots aren't the only ones with a dialect of their own. I’ll finish with a mini-glossary of some of my favorite bits of my kid’s vernacular—it’s not as exotic as the Glaswegian of Shuggie Bain, but it does often require interpreters. My husband is frequently my translator, which makes me feel even more like a dorky out of touch middle-aged lady.
Bruh - this word can be used to express the full spectrum of emotion, from commending a friend on a job well done to expressing your shame and contempt for whatever your mom just said.
Cacked - to be cacked is to be exhausted. “I’m cacked!” might be what someone says just before collapsing into a dreamless sleep on your sofa.
Fit - no one has time to say “outfit” anymore so your outfit is just called your fit and goddamn this bugs the crap out of me.
Fuck with - as in “I fuck with him.” Paradoxically, this means you are fond of someone and spend time with them in an enjoyable way.
I’m fine - if ever I physically attack my beautiful son, it will be because he used this phrase instead of “no thank you,” as in Me: “Julius, would you like some broccoli?” Julius: “I’m fine.”
The aggressiveness of punctuation - If I use a period in a text to my daughter, she thinks I’m angry with her.
Say less - this means they're on board with whatever you’re suggesting. Say less I guess means you can shut up now mom, I do indeed want you to order takeout tonight.
I’ll say less now. Thanks for reading and please subscribe if you’re not a subscriber and share my blog with friends who might like it. My ego would be so appreciative. Xo
“When Doves Cry,” bonus; “Uptown,” great; “1999,” good; “Little Red Corvette,” dicey; “D.M.S.R,” nightmare; “Darling Nikki,” jump out of car at red light.
❤️
I find that with enough distance, some of the things that "drove me mental" are the things I now look back on with bittersweet nostalgia. You're right — it's such a privilege to have the biggest problem in your life be minor annoyances mixed up in so much love.
Must read Shuggie Bain.