<Originally posted elsewhere on November 14th, 2008>
My mom has never been too well versed on adult communication. She's the queen of passive aggressive, the princess of the martyr-kingdom and occasionally the court jester of guilt trips. She is also particularly bad at apologies and admitting she's wrong. (To be fair, apologies aren't my forte either but I think I have mastered decent adult communication thanks to long term relationships and counseling.) I think she may have taken the non-apology to an art form yesterday.
She called with the intention of discussing a visit in January. She said she'd pulled up some dates on Southwest and wondered how they'd work for me. While I was thinking about it, she brought up the holidays.
"You and Edward could come here for the holidays."
I replied, "Well, we're hosting Thanksgiving dinner and we currently have no plans for Christmas but I just want a low key quiet holiday."
She came back with "We have quiet here!"
I said, "I know you do, but flying isn't low key or quiet and flying during the holidays is a nightmare and I'd really rather not."
And, the final volley, "Well, you fly to see everyone else."
Red Light. Green Light. (And if you catch the movie reference without consulting the Church of Google, I'll give you a dollar.)
As calmly as I could, I said "We already agreed that we weren't going to do the holidays together so I'm pretty settled on staying here. I'm not interested in a guilt trip from you about something we already agreed on. I'm more than happy to talk to you about planning a visit in January but I'm done talking about the holidays. When did you want to visit in January?"
She frostily replied that she'd already closed the browser window and she didn't know the dates anymore. Instead of behaving angrily (which I was), I did my best to act normally and we managed to have an okay few minutes of conversation. We hung up the phone and I thought we were done. Another Catholic guilt trip successfully backhanded right back into her court (I've gotten good at this over the years - I don't do much out of guilt anymore except reduced fat salad dressing).
And then she called again.
"You know, sweetie, I just wanted to make sure you know I wasn't trying to lay a guilt trip on you. We're all a little old for that. I'm sorry that it seemed like that's what I was doing."
Omg. An apology? For reals? Holy shit.
"What I said was a joke and I think you took it the wrong way."
No, it wasn't, and no, I didn't. "You fly to see everyone else" has no element of comedy, irony or sarcasm. It's quality, hand-crafted Catholic guilt. I am not stupid. But, trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I saw no point in arguing that and was going to try to accept her apology although it was quickly falling apart the more she talked.
"...and I was just attacked."
I used to try with her. I used to try to have adult conflict resolution until I realized it was like sending a kindergartener to a UN Council Meeting. She's going to nap or eat cookies and either way, an adult conversation is out of the question.
She continued to babble and at this point, she'd managed to fit the entire lower half of her body into her mouth and now *I* was the bad person because she was just offering to fly Edward and me out for the holidays. Right. Yes, we were definitely having the same conversation and it's possible to productively communicate with people who continually rewrite history. That is the point where you scoop up the remaining bits of your patience, wish upon a shooting star and summon the abbreviated version of the Serenity Prayer which is "Fuck It."
I finished up the conversation with a few "Mmm-hmm's, Okay's, and Thanks for letting me know's" before pressing the beloved image of a red phone on my cell.
I heart caller ID.
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