I should’ve stopped listening.

But I didn’t.

I had turned the baby monitor on to keep an ear on my grandmother, who was upstairs in her bed, while my mother left to run some errands.  We are a household filled to the brim with family members spanning four generations; helping one another in our bustling daily lives comes with the territory.

Five minutes had passed when I heard the sound of my mother entering my grandmother’s room.  I had assumed she was long gone, making her way through our sunny suburb in her sturdy Volvo on the way to Costco, the burden of caring for her mother temporarily suspended as she handed me the reigns, her shopping list more a quest for peace of mind than industrial sized rolls of toilet paper.  I heard her give grandma a tray, heard the familiar clinking of a spoon swirling in a tea cup, heard the rustling of pillows being fluffed and adjusted.  And then I heard everything and nothing all at the same time:

“Why don’t you smile when I come in the room?  Why can’t you say ‘thank you’ when I go out of my way to do something for you?”

“I do say thank you.”

“No.  You don’t.  You never say thank you, you never reach out and squeeze my hand.  You never show me any affection.  Just like when I was a child.  I needed that from you then and I need it now.”

I should’ve stopped listening.

But I couldn’t. 

“How can you say that?  I was the best mother I could be.  I loved you.”

“But you never showed it.  You were cold, distant.  You gave me the silent treatment for days when you were mad at me. You sent me away when daddy was sick, to live in some orphanage, when all I really wanted was to come home.”

“I was trying to protect you.  It was temporary.”

“It felt like forever.  I was just a child.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Even now, I’m telling you that you hurt me, that you’re still hurting me, that I want more from you, that I need you to be a loving mom, and you can’t even look me in the eyes and apologize.  You never apologized.  You were never wrong.  That was what you said, that a mother was never wrong.  But you were; you were wrong many times.”

“You will never be satisfied”

“And you’ll never understand.”

I was sitting at the kitchen table, the baby monitor less than two feet away; all I had to do was reach over and turn it off, but I was frozen in my chair, each one of my mother’s accusations echoing inside of me, filling up the hollowed spaces where my own childhood resentments quietly resided. 

“You never apologized.”

“You were always right.”

“You will never change.”

And suddenly, it all made perfect sense.

I can count on one hand the times my mother had willingly given me a heartfelt “I’m sorry.”  She was never wrong even when she wasn’t right, and her demands for respect in the face of momentous mistakes as a parent forced me on a regular basis to swallow my pride and apologize to her through gritted teeth.  She alternated between a neediness that was suffocating and a self-righteousness that left her unaccountable and unremorseful, even when the truth was staring her squarely in the face.  That’s not to say that I don’t love my mother, because I do.  But the love is intertwined with a strong dislike, especially for the way she bullied her way through motherhood.

Sitting there listening as she let my grandmother have it filled me with equal parts sadness and forgiveness.  Sadness for the woman who continues to struggle to make sense of her relationship with her own mother, who is steadily succumbing to dementia and is unable to give my mother the closure she so desperately seeks; forgiveness for the woman who subconsciously passed down her battle scars to me, even though her voracious appetite for affection was a sure sign that she tried hard to protect me from at least some of my grandmother’s mistakes.

That morning, long after my mother had left the room and finally began her day of errands, I felt a sense of relief as I realized that she is just like me; a woman-child who yearns for approval and unconditional love, who demands respect but doesn’t always earn it, who is the sum of many parts, some that should have been discarded long ago but somehow manage to sneak up every now and again.  It was clear to me in those moments after I invaded their privacy that I had inherited the very best and very worst from these two very strong, very powerful women and that it was up to me to choose what I would pass down to my children and what I would choose to leave behind.

I know I shouldn’t have listened.

But I’m so glad I did.