backstory

Whenever I worry about things, I pick at my feet.

If I’m particularly stressed out, my feet look terrible. Is there a good reason for me to be stressed out right now? I don’t know. Is there ever a good reason? Is it normal to pick at your feet to cope with stress? What is normal? Is the fact that I’m even asking these questions a bad sign?

Inevitably, there arrives a situation which calls for someone — an outsider of some kind — to see my feet. A pedicurist, masseuse. A shoe salesman. It will be uncomfortable. They’ll say, Do you have some kind of, uh, injury, here? And I’ll say, Oh that. No that’s just this nervous habit I have. I know, it’s so gross. Because I do, And it is.

I hate it, I hate myself for it. And the worse it gets, then the worse they get, until sometimes it hurts me to walk on it, but only a little bit. Not a ton. Not enough to keep me from walking. Just a little bit, to remind me of a problem nagging at the back of my brain.

I’ve always hated my feet anyway. They’re too wide — that’s the part I get from my father. But the toes I get from my mother. I look at them in my sandals and I think of her. I am pretty sure you are supposed to look at things that remind you of your mother and be happy but that is not how I feel. I think, I should not wear these shoes. Or at least, I should not wear these shoes and put my feet up on the dashboard of the passenger seat like that, because when I do it’s like we are driving to San Diego again, in the yellow Volvo or the brown Peugeout wagon, and I am ten, and Abba or Fleetwood Mac is playing on the stereo and there is nothing I would not do to escape this skin of mine.

When I do I wonder if Mini will ever feel that same way and it’s like my heart will break in two at the thought of him ever having to feel any of it the crazy messed up, slanty way that I do. And just then he will catch my eye and ask me, Mommy, is that an owie on your foot? And I will say, Yes, baby, but it’s OK, Mommy will fix it. And he will kiss it, and say, All better. And for a moment, it is.

8 Comments TWEET THIS Share On Facebook EMAIL THIS

My mother called me last week to ask why Mini doesn’t like going to school.

That was the first topic she mentioned, anyway, and the one that set the tone for the rest of our conversation. We would switch to hypothetical drop-in visits, my brother’s impending wedding, whether or not my dog is to have ACL surgery, all the while me adjusting, and readjusting, my hurt and then, later, anger about the way she chose to start the conversation, several times over the course of a ten-minute conversation. Did she say it to hurt me, or was it just something she didn’t understand? How can I be that woman — the one who, at 36, and-now-almost-37-fuck!-let’s-face-it-I’m-pushing-40-now still resents her parents for things that happened years ago? Doesn’t everybody do the best they can, given the tools they have available to them?

I don’t usually talk about my parents here. Somewhat out of respect for them as private people who don’t necessarily want their lives deconstructed on the internet. Somewhat to avoid conflict. But mostly, if I’m telling the truth, mostly it is because I really don’t want to be that woman. I hate that woman. I wish she would just get over it already.

Occasionally, one or the other of my parents will peek in here, and catch a little glimpse of my life. But sometimes, these little windows they see are worse than if they had never looked at all. We relate in fits and starts, half-truths and omissions. I don’t think my parents know what to do with me as I exist here — it is an Anna they really do not know. It is a me that I rarely let them see. Because I don’t trust them with it.

Did the window through which my mother saw Mini’s day at school make it look like he was a child who did not enjoy going to school? Did she see an introverted child, sitting patiently on the steps for an absent mother to come and fetch him, listening intently for the jingle of her car keys while the other kids laughed, played, sang John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith? Did she imagine it? Was it the same window through which I looked? What if her window was the more accurate one?

Parenting changes you in so many ways. You don’t expect some of them. I never thought I would be revisiting my own childhood every time I went to pick up Mini from school. I never thought I would be the one faced with these kinds of dilemmas and the politics of leaving a child at the gate.

Hey everybody, we’ve got a new featured blogger ad up and running! Please check out Marcy at The Glamorous Life Association in the sidebar ASAP! If you’d like to participate in the ABDPBT Featured Bloggers Program, please email me and I’ll put you on the waiting list.

13 Comments TWEET THIS Share On Facebook EMAIL THIS