Don't Take It Personally

I flew to my mother's tiny hometown last weekend with said mother and my living son to celebrate Mother's Day with my grandmother. My son was the charmer he always is, which attracted the usual attention from airport personnel in every line of work there. Lately, every conversation I hold with that sort of stranger about my son seems to culminate in the dreaded question: "Is he your first?"

I spent the first half of my second's son life saying firmly but gently something along the lines of, "No, our first son died." More recently, I've been tired of the deer-in-headlight looks and have come to care less about the education of strangers, so I've been mumbling yesses and walking away from those conversations. The other night, after we checked in at the tiny, rural, regional airport nearest my grandparents' home, the very bored security agent wanted to talk to my son - who can blame her? - then started the usual question train. I gave her an undignified "yes" to THE question, but it kind of got my goat.

My mother - whom I love - chided me to not "take it so personally" when I half-heartedly ranted to her about what a dumb, pointless question "Is he your first?" is to ask of a perfect stranger. I'm right on this one, aren't I. What is the point of that question, other than a lazy attempt at small talk? What would it matter to a complete stranger if I had one child or ten, living or dead? It's not as though when I give in to the yes that it engenders any follow up conversation. Say this about the honest no: it may stop many a conversation, but at least occasionally it triggers more. The yes never leads to anything else. Why? Because the question never meant anything in the first place.

What bothers me more than the question currently is my mom's attitude about my response. I wish I didn't care about whether she "gets it" or not, but she matters to me, so I care. I shouldn't be surprised by her response: after my first son's memorial service, when I complained about the dumb cliches a few people offered me (the for-a-reasons and the better-places and the only-happens-to-the-strongs), she chided me similarly. A few months later, she told me that after she went home she was really down in the dumps for about two weeks, and then she decided she wasn't going to let it get her down any more. After that conversation, I stopped trying to explain what I was experiencing to her and became a more focused blogger. When she recognized I was shutting her out, she said so; I told her I indeed was shutting her out because she didn't, couldn't understand, and after she pushed, I told her that her instant judgements on my complaints made me not want to even try to explain it to her. After that conversation, there was some space between us for a while, but we gradually drifted back into a more comfortable relationship.

In the overall scheme of things, some TS@ agent mindlessly asking me if my son is my first is not that monumental. People saying dumb things generally is not a big deal, either - dumb things being said is a contagion that will never end. To me personally, though, and to many parents who have lost, I'm sure, certain things stick in our craw, and we'd really appreciate if the people to whom we are the closest gave a damn.

The really, really funny thing is, just a few hours earlier, my mom had made essentially the same complaint to one of her parents. To summarize, my maternal grandfather is a big old doodie-head, always has been, always will be, and he shocked my mother and the rest of the known universe by showing up at the relatives' home at which we were staying, an hour before we left for the airport, to tell my mother that he recognized she had avoided him and to ask her forgiveness for the things he had done (which would make for one long list, let me tell you). My mother told him that she had sometimes avoided him because she didn't like it when he told her what she was doing wrong. Good for her, I suppose - no, truly, good for her - it's just that I'm kind of disappointed that she couldn't draw a parallel between her situation with her parent and my situation with mine.

What I Want From Important People In My Life:

1. An ear.
2. A shoulder.
3. Encouragement.

What I Do Not Ever Want From Important People In My Life:

1. Judgement.
2. Cliches.
3. Lectures on how I should feel.

Writing these things, complaining about my mother, I feel a little adolescent, but what the hell, it's how I feel.

On the positive side, it makes me appreciate my husband even more. He actually understands how I feel about this sort of thing almost always. It is one of his chief good points, the way that he "gets it". We are not in synch 100% of the time, but it's pretty close. Understanding of that quality between two people is some serious relationship glue.

My lovely husband returns tomorrow from an annual guys' trip, and not a moment too soon. I understood today why old people tend to talk to their dead spouses; I found myself talking to my husband mentally all day long: after the call informing me that my grandmother, the same one I just visited, had a stroke last night and isn't expected to recover from it; after my son and I visited my husband's grandmother in the hospital and came away confident of her ability to resume care of our son when she gets out; after my son made the "mwah!" sound in response to each kiss my mother blew him as she left my house tonight, an awesome first. I'm pooped after my trip and after a few days of taking care of my son, alone, 24 hours a day, and I know my husband will be tuckered after traveling all day tomorrow to get back, but I suspect this time tomorrow, we'll be lying wide awake in bed with the lights out, catching up on all the things we've missed telling each other, and you know what? We'll be taking the things each other says personally.