How right she was, not that Mary-Kate – MK to her friends –
would ever admit it. She loathed
admitting anyone knew more than she did, let alone her own mother.
But that was when she was a typical teenager. Twenty-five years plus later and about to
send her only child off to college, she finally understands. And, as luck would have it for her friends,
only pretends she still hates it when they know more than she does.
MK’s Mom, Ellen, was born and raised in a generation where
“things” were not discussed; rather, grace and class were demonstrated by what
you did not say. Restraint apparently took more strength than
throwing a right hook or jabbing at an offender with cutting words. Yet, mess with her kids and the gloves were
off.
“Hi, Mom,” MK squeaked out.
“Are you sneezing or crying?” her mother responded over a
cell connection and hundreds of miles.
“I can’t take this.
Why does she have to leave?” MK rhetorically pleaded. “I teach college
classes on the side, you know I could totally have homeschooled her.”
“You’ve done your job,” MK’s mother said matter-of-factly of
her oldest granddaughter. “This will be
tough, but you will both get through it and your relationship will be even
better.”
Ellen was always the optimist. While you wouldn’t want to catch her on one
of the few non-sunny days, she was never without positive reinforcement,
especially on the mothering or wife front.
Once recently, she told her still-learning-to-show-restraint-with-her-words
daughter that they (Ellen and MK’s Dad - because ‘they’ have always been
“they”) were at a get together a few weekends ago with two of their long-time
couple friends. Everything was going
swimmingly and per usual - lots of food, lots of conversation presumably about
their grown kids who would always be “kids,” and lots of happy in the hour(s).
“She’ll be fine, she always is,” Ellen told the other women
as they asked about MK and her empty nest.
Of course the better question would have been asking about how much MK
relishes stereotypes and clichés, but nothing kills alcohol flow like generational
disparity.
The three men began laughing over stories about their
respective jobs, mostly surrounding labor relations. Joey, the husband of one of the couple
friends, owns his own company where, ahem, not all of the employees have cards
of the green variety; however, his job in a prior life was the topic of the
evening’s discussion.
“I may have been a collector of sorts,” Joey began. “You know, of things which certain suspect
people living in the outskirts of Philly could not necessarily afford initially,
or pay back in a timely manner when people like me told them face-to face-ish
that the bank also knows they cannot cough up anything other than nicotine phlegm.”
Joey’s wife, Carolyn, cringed. She was a debutante back in the day. MK’s Mom did not belong to the Carolyn Coiffed
Fan Club.
“Oh, Joe…” she said in her best I love the little people
voice.
“What about that bothers you, Carolyn?” Ellen asked, poker face
intact.
Ellen had a way of dealing with her dislike of certain
people which subdued not only the offenders real-time, but also her propensity
of wanting to choke them out and subsequently cause a scene absent of grace and
class.
“It’s just…it’s just that I wasn’t allowed to date ‘those
kind’ of people that Joe had to deal with when I was growing up.” “Didn’t your parents tell you that you couldn’t
date anyone that didn’t, you know, measure up?”
Ellen also had a way of dealing with anyone who was
intolerant of the entire human race.
“No. My parents liked
people for who they were and how they made you feel based solely upon how they
treated you. It was a pretty simple
methodology they employed, actually,” she responded, again miraculously
devoid of tone or eye rolls.
“Well,” Carolyn went on obliviously. “Even worse than those people, my parents said, were Italians. I could NEVER date those kind.”
“Now that I think about it, my parents forbade me to date
stupid people,” Ellen said without hesitation, grace, class, or apology.
They shared a look and
a grin that only they understood after all these years.
Comfortingly, MK comes from a long line of hot-tempered Italians and
Irishmen alike, all of whom adore family even more than they do homemade pasta,
Jameson’s, or putting idiots in their place.
And she knew now just as she always had, that in the midst of generational
“things” and life changing seasons, she would always have these kind of
precious exchanges and memories – both old and new.
