Wednesday, August 31, 2005Your Mother Should KnowMy books arrived today from the printer.They are perfect. When I had my children I didn't feel the same way as I do about these books. It took a LOT more work to create this book. The babies just sort of evolved inside me, like alien beings. When they popped out I felt awe and curiousity more than pride in my creation. I was the incubator for that project. For this project... sorry, God, but I was GOD. I really was. No incubator about it. I put every cell in place, re-arranged the pieces so many times I couldn't remember how to think after awhile, worked so hard on every molecule that I can tell you stories about everything from the drop caps at the beginnings of chapters to the dirt on my feet on the back photograph. (Believe it or not, we airbrushed them clean(er) in PhotoShop.) On the other hand, when it comes to the actual content, I was kind of a vessel. I don't really remember the content anymore. I am so detached from it that I flip through the book and kind of marvel at the fact that this writer sounds soooo much like me. And her experiences, wow... they sound strangely familiar. I made the questionable decision about three weeks ago to show my mother the book. The reponse was . . . intense. This thing punched more buttons for her than I ever would have thought possible. And she punched dozens more back. She was appalled at the sex stuff -- of which there is one (1) kiss and one (1) extraordinarily embarrassing disclosure. She was appalled at all the men (there are four chapters, of 36, that deal with a dating relationship I had with someone else.) There are four or so more that deal with men and women and how we drive each other insane in our quest to connect. The statistics indicate that it's relatively benign in the expose category; but to my mother I was preparing to unveil myself on a 15-story marquee in Times Square. It was a rough couple of weeks. To our credit we are still talking (we've stopped talking for years over much MUCH less). And we've agreed to disagree about the book. In the pile of letters she wrote, I even found one that said the writing was wonderful and that I was a "neat person." I kept that one. As this was going on, I tried extremely hard to put myself in her shoes. I was about to go public on a topic that threatened her deepest vulnerabilities. I proclaim in the book that it's OK to be in the middle of one's life and be sexual and have fun. This is problematic to no one... except one's mother. Because mothers are programmed to worry. And mothers of girls have to watch out for things like sex. I have boys. But I can make the translation in my head. And I tried to think about what I would do if Spencer or Taylor decided to come out with a performance or book or some other public proclamation about something I violently rejected or feared. What would that be? I pushed myself to think about that. What if Spencer wrote about his experiments with gerbils and lightbulbs while converting to religious fundamentalism and... and... I couldn't get far enough out there to really get to a similar situation, but I could catch the flavor. I think the religious fundamentalism came closest to evoking a knee-jerk horror of going public. I would hope that I would be evolved enough to be 100% proud of his achievement, no matter what the content matter. But what if he was writing about something that I really hated? How much should your mother know, anyway? As a mother, do I want to know everything that goes on in my children's minds? I can't answer for sure that I don't. I find their thought process fascinating. But if they're doing something dangerous... do I want to know, or not? Well, of course I do -- but should I? Or is growing up a process of attempting ever more risky feats and succeeding at them? Is it my job to stop them, to give them advice, to hold my tongue and watch while my stomach turns inside out... or should I -- sometimes -- just not know? I don't know if it was a great idea to expose my mother to my innermost (soon to be public, highly edited, laced with creative license) thoughts. She had a hard time differentiating between what I wrote and who I am. I apparently am very convincing that way. I certainly provided her with more stress and pain than she needed. I also opened up some rooms in our relationship that had been boarded up for decades and were in serious need of airing out. For the first time in many many many years, I feel that she knows who I am and I am consequently more able to cut loose with my humor and weirdness. We laugh a bit more often, talk daily, and have made incredible progress. How much should your mother know? How much should our children tell us? As I say in the book -- 13.95!!! On sale on Saturday!!! -- the best approach may be to trust that we will be informed (or find out) on a need-to-know-basis. We don't have to spend our lives sniffing out the truth, from our kids, our mates, or even our own parents. Nor should we spend our lives occluding our actions from the same people. As with many things, it boils down to trust. Trust that the information will come to us in it's own good time. And until then our job is to love, to cherish and to honor our children, our parents, and ourselves. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:18 PM  
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