Member-only story
I’m sad and angry, but mostly sad. I just hung up the phone with my mother after a conversation where she asked for money to finalize some home improvements that I already have financed in full. We were pretending they were meant for my son and me when we visited her, but truly they were intended for her to have a comfortable living — which is fine if my financial effort would only happen as an exception.
In the meantime, I’m caught in this co-dependent relationship where I’m subsidizing her to make sure she has a good reason for loving me as a thoughtful and, most importantly, financially potent daughter.
The background
My mom never worked more than a couple of years when she was young. Something then happened, I’m not sure what — the factory she worked closed down, so all the employees were left with their eyes in the sun. However, she wasn’t one of those to look for alternatives.
I could assume a lot, so I’d better refrain from it, yet, the fact is that for more than 30 years, my mother hasn’t worked a day for an employer. Granted, she did a lot of domestic work instead, and she took care of my aging grandmother until she died, but the general feeling was she didn’t particularly enjoy this kind of work either.
