Step on a crack, break your mother's back
step on a line, break your mother's spine
Growing up, it was just mom and I. We took care of my great grandmother together until I was ten, when she fell and broke her hip, went into a nursing home and died within weeks. I'm not entirely sure when we stopped drifting around and moved in with great grandma, but I do know that it was the first time my life had been stable. Mom worked nights, mostly, at that point. We were close.
I'm trying to get that back right now, and I'm not sure how, or what it looks like. There's... damage. complication
When I was 11, she remarried a guy, so I'd have a father in my life again. Didn't really work out that way, and over the next ten years and two siblings, they fractured in the way that only people who love someone else and don't love themselves can, where the parts that used to glue them together turn sideways tearing up the things they care about, long shredding wounds with sanity and stability leaking through the lives set on top, tied around the bloody stump.
I worked for her, for a few years, after that, and eventually took over a childcare business that she ran. I do it myself, it's licensed in my name, and I'm trying to separate out the business from family entirely, no rental agreements to complicate things now that I've already handled the professional separation.
It's important, see, cuz when she and I were working together, and later, when I was renting the space she used to work in to run the business she used to run, there was never any line. What I did with my work "made it impossible" for her. "Made it hard". Words, other ways of saying that things I was doing with the business that was mine now would fundamentally change Mom's reality in a way that she didn't like, and she would turn and yank on the strings that she still had and shake the foundations of my life again. Codependence. Something. I'm not sure.
Once, when I was working, I had let three children turn a job of washing the table into a game of splashing and pouring, which mom informed me was NOT what she had in mind. I shouldn't have, she said in some curt phrasing and furious tone, and strode forward to "fix" things to the way she wanted them, recklessly plunging in in frustration and annoyance, when she tipped and fell, crashing into the floor sideways, fracturing her hip and tearing her ankle. Another time, before, she asked me to work on plastering the ceiling, and I'd gotten mouthy and left, because I felt like my time wasn't hers to use and abuse and she just didn't get it. Teenage rebellion, carried on into my twenties. She'd pressed her lips into a tight line and started to do it herself, and before I'd managed to slam the door behind me had already leaned out too far on the chair and tipped herself onto her back on the hardwood. Another emergency room visit, another long recovery period. I was never blamed directly for her injuries, but she made no secret of her belief that she simply couldn't manage her anger when I had the audacity to show such disrespect. To this day, when she and I argue, sometimes I feel like she's THROWING her well-being at me, taking her own composure or health or our relationship and knocking it over in a fit of pique like so many Monopoly pieces shoved off so many tables.
Yesterday, she told me that she was thinking about moving back into town, and wanted to work with me again. That she wanted me to think about it, paying me a full salary and having me on full time, since our rental agreement was about over anyways and I'd said I was struggling on the business side of things. I told her I had been really looking forward to having a normal interaction with her again instead, that I'd been really excited about NOT working with her even as much as we still were anymore, she could just be my mom the expert on daycares, talking to me from her own business, giving advice, maybe.
I'm not sure what's going to happen next. I'm not sure what I can do, getting the business set up on my own, but I know I'm going to try. I'm not sure what Mom's going to do, or how she'll react to what I choose.
Step on a crack, break your mother's back
Step on a line, break your mother's spine
what a crock of shit. I love Mom, but I'm only responsible for myself and my own actions. she can take care of herself like a grown-ass woman.
step on a line, break your mother's spine
Growing up, it was just mom and I. We took care of my great grandmother together until I was ten, when she fell and broke her hip, went into a nursing home and died within weeks. I'm not entirely sure when we stopped drifting around and moved in with great grandma, but I do know that it was the first time my life had been stable. Mom worked nights, mostly, at that point. We were close.
I'm trying to get that back right now, and I'm not sure how, or what it looks like. There's... damage. complication
When I was 11, she remarried a guy, so I'd have a father in my life again. Didn't really work out that way, and over the next ten years and two siblings, they fractured in the way that only people who love someone else and don't love themselves can, where the parts that used to glue them together turn sideways tearing up the things they care about, long shredding wounds with sanity and stability leaking through the lives set on top, tied around the bloody stump.
I worked for her, for a few years, after that, and eventually took over a childcare business that she ran. I do it myself, it's licensed in my name, and I'm trying to separate out the business from family entirely, no rental agreements to complicate things now that I've already handled the professional separation.
It's important, see, cuz when she and I were working together, and later, when I was renting the space she used to work in to run the business she used to run, there was never any line. What I did with my work "made it impossible" for her. "Made it hard". Words, other ways of saying that things I was doing with the business that was mine now would fundamentally change Mom's reality in a way that she didn't like, and she would turn and yank on the strings that she still had and shake the foundations of my life again. Codependence. Something. I'm not sure.
Once, when I was working, I had let three children turn a job of washing the table into a game of splashing and pouring, which mom informed me was NOT what she had in mind. I shouldn't have, she said in some curt phrasing and furious tone, and strode forward to "fix" things to the way she wanted them, recklessly plunging in in frustration and annoyance, when she tipped and fell, crashing into the floor sideways, fracturing her hip and tearing her ankle. Another time, before, she asked me to work on plastering the ceiling, and I'd gotten mouthy and left, because I felt like my time wasn't hers to use and abuse and she just didn't get it. Teenage rebellion, carried on into my twenties. She'd pressed her lips into a tight line and started to do it herself, and before I'd managed to slam the door behind me had already leaned out too far on the chair and tipped herself onto her back on the hardwood. Another emergency room visit, another long recovery period. I was never blamed directly for her injuries, but she made no secret of her belief that she simply couldn't manage her anger when I had the audacity to show such disrespect. To this day, when she and I argue, sometimes I feel like she's THROWING her well-being at me, taking her own composure or health or our relationship and knocking it over in a fit of pique like so many Monopoly pieces shoved off so many tables.
Yesterday, she told me that she was thinking about moving back into town, and wanted to work with me again. That she wanted me to think about it, paying me a full salary and having me on full time, since our rental agreement was about over anyways and I'd said I was struggling on the business side of things. I told her I had been really looking forward to having a normal interaction with her again instead, that I'd been really excited about NOT working with her even as much as we still were anymore, she could just be my mom the expert on daycares, talking to me from her own business, giving advice, maybe.
I'm not sure what's going to happen next. I'm not sure what I can do, getting the business set up on my own, but I know I'm going to try. I'm not sure what Mom's going to do, or how she'll react to what I choose.
Step on a crack, break your mother's back
Step on a line, break your mother's spine
what a crock of shit. I love Mom, but I'm only responsible for myself and my own actions. she can take care of herself like a grown-ass woman.