Lies My Mother Told Me

i have a book called 'lies my teacher told me", which details many of the historically inaccurate "facts" which history teachers persist in indoctrinating their students with. granted, many (maybe even most?) of these teachers have no idea that they are disseminating lies, since they are teaching what they were taught or what comes from textbooks, which are globally assumed to be Ultimate Truth.

on the radio today (surprise!) was an ad for an upcoming show about lies your mother told you. they were asking for things like 'if you go swimming after you eat, you will get a cramp and drown', but it got me thinking about the lies my mother told me for real. the kind that mess you up without you even realizing that your entire perspective on the world is just totally messed up. i get the outright lies. someone very near and dear to me comes from a background of liars. they equivocate, they color the truth, and when it suits their purpose, they just out and out lie. it's a cultural thing that i don't exactly get, but at least you know that if their lips are moving, you may be on the recieving end of a tall tale.

my mother had a great life. until it fell apart. for whatever reasons, which i will not share on this blog, her really put together life came undone. she went from glassy eyed suburban housewife to cynical raging bitch in the space of less than a year. what i didn't realize was how her constant simmering anger would cause me to have constant simmering anger, even though i was neither the aggreived party in her messes nor aware of the impact of her 'life lessons'.

now, as a mother myself, i really see that although you want to be a role model for your children, you are a person first. whatever you are dealing with is dealt with on the stage of your role in the family. even what you think is private is not, even what you think you are hiding you're not, and even what you think nobody notices, they do. you want to show your kids how to rise above adversity and how to soar over challenges, but really, they hear you crying through the bathroom door. they hear you on the phone with your friend when you're wispering and they're supposed to be sleeping. they hear your tone and see your eyes roll when that certain neighbor's name is mentioned and they internalize it.

but, rather than give a sermon about how we should all be good role models for our offspring, i'm gonna just write about one of the multitude of ways my mother messed me up. cuz it's my blog, and i can.

my mother hates men. no, she's not a feminist. no, she's not a lesbian. she has no political agenda, and she doesn't rant and rave about it. she just takes pot shots at them. she makes sarcastic comments about them. she sneers and jeers and informs her children (now grown) and her grandchildren (quite young and impressionable) that men juts totally suck. you can't depend on them. they lie. they cheat. they are selfish. you better get what you want from them and leave before they leave you. no man can be trusted even with your front door key, much less your heart. she tried her best to insulate us against the hurt she carried around. but really, she just made all of us have really low expectations about men. i guess we figured that if they were all equally bad, we might as well not look too hard to find someone who put up a nice facade. it would just fall away eventually anyway, to reveal the Man underneath. it made everything very straighforward and very clear.

until i met my husband.

my husband is awesome. he was not raised in a world where men leave. he was not raised believing that it was only a matter of time until someone messed you over. he was actually raised in a family that believes that they are incredible people and are entitled to all the good life has to offer. what revolutionary concepts.

you see, i was taught that the expectations reflect the realities. my husband showed me that the expectations shape the realities.

if you expect bad and assume bad, you attract bad. or you mess up the good because you are so convinced that it is or will be bad that you can't enjoy it. this is not some metaphysical woo-woo theory. it is a simple fact that if you go through life with white knuckles and your teeth clenched, you often end up with numb fingers and broken teeth.

so, should you look through rose colored glasses? should you believe in your deepest heart that if you wish it good it will be good? of course not. but neither can you live a full, rich, functioning life if you are locked behind layer upon layer of protective coating.

all i'm saying is that i'm only human. my mother was only human, as were her parents and their parents and everyone on back. we do the best with what we can with what we have, we play the cards we're dealt, and the rest is pretty much out of our control.

it's comfortable to dwell on this, but i prefer to try to make a conscious effort every day to rise above the lies my mother told me.