Thank Your Own Self

My first year working in customer service on the phones, I was connected to a woman whose husband had just died the week before. She was close to the breaking point, trying to figure out what she needed to do for her financial situation before the end of the year in order to avoid tax consequences.

“My husband always took care of all the financial stuff and I don’t know how now.”

I assured her that I’d help her figure it out and when she asked if I could call her back the next week, I set up a time with her and called back at that exact time, though it’s not normally part of my job to do call-backs.

After I walked her through what she needed to do, she was very grateful that I’d taken extra time (that would count against me rather than for me in my monthly stats) and said, “I want you to write something down for me. All right? Are you ready?”

I told her I was ready.

“I want you to write to your mother and tell her ‘thank you for raising a kind and compassionate human being who was there for me in my time of need.’ Did you get that?”

I was close to tears myself at that point. My relationship with my mother is, um, distant. She’s 93 and I should be a better daughter, but to be honest, when the divorce started three years ago, she said, “I told you not to marry him.” And in fact, she had. Thirty years previously.

It felt painful that she’d waited thirty years to say “I told you so,” though in the intervening time she’d seemed happy enough with my marriage choice.

I’m a mother of five living children myself now and I know how difficult it is to watch your children in pain and to be able to do very little to help. And still, that doesn’t fix the problems that are between us.

My mother was so unhappy with my marriage thirty years ago that she didn’t come to the ceremony and made excuses about it, though she’s attended every wedding of her other ten children (some of them twice). This hurt me deeply at the time and it was something that was never resolved between us, though I thought she’d accepted my choice after my marriage turned out to be viable.

Thirty years of marriage isn’t exactly a disaster, but a divorce in the kind of religious community I was raised in (Mormon) is a black stain, and I’m aware of this. I’m also aware that me stepping away from full participation in the religious community (though technically I’m still a member of record) is also painful for her—and for me. It’s hard to know what to say to each other when there is so much in the way.

I know the language of religion she speaks. I know it very well. But I purposely refuse to speak that language anymore. After my daughter died in 2005 (when my mother and father made a great effort to fly out on a dime and attend her infant funeral), my belief in God and religion failed. My life has spiraled downhill since then in a variety of ways, including the end of my marriage.

So here we are, she and I, both hurting and aware of our failings and unable to speak the other’s language. But also wanting—something from each other.

I wrote down what this customer told me and sent it that night to my mother via email. She doesn’t have a phone and only checks her email intermittently, but the next day, she gave me the response that I knew would come.

How did I know? Because it is exactly what I would say to my children.

When I asked my children what I would say to them if they had sent me the email, every one of them guessed the correct thing. They know me.

“Thank your own self,” my mother said. “You’re the one who chose to be a kind, compassionate human being. I don’t get credit for that.”

But the truth is, she has to get some credit for that. There has to be some deep connection between us that spans the years and the religious estrangement because she taught me to mother my children as she mothered me. And I accepted that her way of mothering was (mostly) the way that I wanted to mother my children.

So I am not, in fact, thanking my own self, Mom. I’m thanking  you, too. Despite it all.