Mamma was the queen of the guilt trippers! If there was a guilt trippers’ bus, she was the driver.She used guilt as a means of control without hollering or nagging. Sometimes it was a steely look, or a roll of the eyes,but you knew! You knew when you were doing something” she who must be obeyed ” disapproved of .
It was my unfortunate luck that I was a teenager when mamma was going through the”change”! I could have stood on my head and spit quarters and it would not have been enough. She was never big with the compliments but during this time ,she was brutal!
It was the late sixties, early seventies when styles were diverse to say the least.If I wore a mini skirt, she’d say’Humft ,that’s a nice belt you have on!” Believe me it was not the shortest skirt in the world.If I wore a midi skirt ( an ankle lenght skirt, popular at the time),she’d say “Don’t tell anyone I own you!” There was no pleasing her! So I decided not to try and please her at all! She suspected me of every story she heard on the news.
If I came in five minutes after curfew ,she was there smelling my breath for liquor and checking my eyes for drugs, neither of which I did. After I left for college she mellowed. My baby sister would come in pissed to the gills and go in and talk to her.(The gall!) Mamma never suspected. My brothers would have bonfires in the back yard and she’d approve. Mind you ,one would find the wine bottles in the bushes the morning after ,but she never suspected.
One day I came home from practice teaching and she had cleaned my brother’s room . She was airing out his sleeping bag and found quite a number of self rolled “cigarettes”. “God love him ,” she said , “he’s trying to save money by rolling his own!”Yeah! Right! I said nothing. She was the most mellow parent I’d ever seen! Not only that ,she would have defended them against anything! I wanted to scream!
I always swore that I would not go through menopause because I went through hers. Guess what ,I did anyway, and now that I’m through it ,I understand. You are not reasonable or logical. I can see why she was so forceful with me , and not with them. And if she were alive today, I don’t think she would mind me telling anyone she owned me!
