‘M’ is for the many ways you loved me
- posted: 11 Dec. 2007
- scrollcampus@byui.edu
It began with a hunch. A hunch and a need for some verbal loving.
I flipped open my phone and dialed the first person on my speed dial. The person I knew would come through for me. The person who would listen to all my woes and provide miraculously simple answers. My mom.
She answered and without even listening to my breathless hello, my obviously despondent tone, she informed me that she couldn’t talk. She and my dad were in the Las Vegas Airport, “having a little time away.” She would call me when they got back. Have a wonderful week.
I was stunned. Time away from what? My parents live alone. They own their own business. They are, essentially, free agents. And while I realize that Rexburg isn’t exactly a thriving metropolis of lights, they could have, should have, come to visit me.
I realize that I may sound mildly Oedipus-complex-ridden, but I can’t help feeling that my mother simply loves me less than she did last year. The facts speak for themselves. She no longer calls me daily, expressing her depressive state as a result of her empty-nestedness. She doesn’t cry when I return to Rexburg after a weekend at home. Our (rather infrequent) phone calls last an average of five minutes, a far cry from the telephone-bonding rituals of yesteryear.
I attempted to guilt my mother into missing me by telling her all of this. Her response? A sigh and, “Madi…”
I sensed what that “Madi” contained, and I felt my resentment growing. I know the facts. But so what if I am graduating college in a year? So what if social norms predict that I should have already achieved emotional sovereignty? So what if I spent the first 18 years of my life fighting tooth and nail for independence? I am not (okay, only a little) ashamed to admit that I still need my mother.
In desperation, I tried a series of techniques to return myself to golden-child status. Surprisingly, the most effective of these was asking my mother’s advice about guys, a chat that I had avoided like a public restroom since my mother let loose my crush’s name into the mother-gossip mill in fifth grade.
I was surprised to learn of my mother’s liberal man-philosophies. Her most frequent counsel was to stalk anyone who caught my eye. She told stories of her college years, when she and her friends would look up attractive men on the school’s registration system, find out their class schedules and conveniently “be around” when the aforementioned hotties got out of class.
I began to feel slightly uneasy about everything my mother had ever told me. Hearing her huntress tales was like seeing a kid on a leash — I understood the logic behind doing it, but it still creeped me out.
Inevitably, she became frustrated with my passive nature, and we ceased all talk of guys. I began to wonder what was wrong with me. I wasn’t homesick last year when it would have been understandable. I’ve considered the possibility that I’m experiencing diminishing marginal utility. The less available my mother is to me, the more I want her.
So, feeling like some kind of desperate relationship fermata, I continue to call my mom much more often than an apparently independent, though still teenaged, life-rookie should. And while I recognize that a more laissez-faire approach to this relationship might make me feel less pathetic, I also know that I will probably never stop needing my mom.
And subtlety has never been my strong point. 
