Can You Imagine If A Child Were Involved?

I talked to my mother last night for the first time in three weeks. My mother, when I first moved out of my childhood home and into an apartment of my own, would call me every time it rained to make sure that I had gotten home from work okay. This never failed to irritate me, as I had already lived in two foreign countries and felt that if I could handle myself there, I could certainly handle living in an apartment less than 20 miles from where I grew up with a girlfriend I had known since high school. Later, when I graduated university and moved to the City of Light, she would call at least once a week, usually twice, just to chat. That was fine; by that point, we'd grown into our roles as "adult daughter" and "mother of adult daughter" and developed a much more friendship-like relationship. If I went longer than a week without talking to her, she would give me all kinds of grief about it, but in a teasing kind of way, so it was still good.

Then I started law school. My mother will not call me, I have to be the one to call her. Because "it might be a bad time". Now, let's face it: there is no truly "good time" to talk on the phone during the school year. There's always *something* I could or should be doing. But I am not a machine and I do take time to socialize and talk with friends, so I could certainly find the time to talk to my mother. And if it's truly a Bad Time, I would just say to her (as I would-- and have-- say to my friends) "I can't talk right now, let me call you later/tomorrow/when I have the time to think again/ after exams". I tell her this ALL. THE. TIME. to no avail. This irritates me far more than the whole "It's raining pretty hard out there, I wanted to make sure you made it home from work safely" thing ever did.

So, I finally get my mother on the phone last night and she spends most of the conversation telling me about all the cute things that my cat has been doing. My mother is convinced that the cat has a 5-8 word vocabulary, including "Hello", "Out", and "No". She wants to enter my amazing talking cat on the Late Night With David Letterman Show for the Stupid Pet Tricks segment. In between anecdotes about the cute things Kitty did, she talks baby talk to the cat: "Izz zat my ittle sweetie? She's such a cute wittle kitty!" As a result, my mother still does not know the status of my job search or even what state I've decided (more or less) to take the bar in. She has no idea that Finbar was here for a visit and I didn't even get to tell her my funny story about the "abandoned" briefcase on the Metro the other day. But I know all about how the cat hid under my mother's bed and tried to jump out and grab her toes as my mother walked by looking for her.

And my mother wonders why I don't plan to have children. Can you imagine? Between having me for a mother, being corrupted by Finbar's mother, and being smothered and doted on by my mother, the poor child would be in a mental hospital before middle school.