A 5 hour conversation with my mother

A 5 hour conversation with my mother, otherwise known as “a conversation with my mother” is actually quite fun these days. She can not put down the phone though.

Many people say “that’s because she’s your mom and she loves you” and all I can say is “well she sure loved a lot of store clerks in her life” because when I was young she would talk all their ears off…about their clothing, about the items she was purchasing, she’d tell them stories and try to get stories out of them. No it didn’t last 5 hours but if they were polite and unoccupied it could often last up to an hour.

I suppose she is where I inherited my interest in people from. The difference is that I try to spread my curiosity between different victims to avoid causing them too much pain. Not everyone can handle a 5 hour conversation and in fact, it’s rare that a five hour conversation leaves one feel more fulfilled than exhausted, regardless of who you are talking to. Sure there are exceptions but I have a lot to do and my work and play time isn’t always clearly divided so 5 hours usually leaves me feeling a bit like telling the next person I encounter to leave me alone, even if I enjoyed the conversation.

She somehow manages to turns conversations about socks into one about politics or her childhood. I wonder if I am that charismatic…my grandfather certainly was. He would make friends with anyone and everyone. We received VIP treatment whenever he was around without ever paying for it because he was always giving people nicknames and inviting them to his house.

Now that I think about it, I probably inherited a lot of unconventional “old-school” behavior from him. I’m not explicitly seeking perks and I am far more allergic to bullshit than he was, but I guess I must have preferred his and my mothers willingness to talk with strangers that most other people around me did not seem to engage in. I liked the surprise of being able to get to know someone anywhere and even potentially becoming friends. Whether it’s the store clerk or the person sitting next to me on a bus, if I’m not preoccupied with something important (like Hive 🙂), I’m happy to have a conversation, even if we never talk again. This is what motivates my travel experiences too, not sightseeing, nor history or hot spots, just people and their stories or their perspective.

It’s also funny to see how a similar trait evolved over generations. My grandfather obviously enjoyed his perks and wanted more of them. I mean, why not, he got tickets for his kids to go see the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Doors just by being friendly.

My mother on the other hand was lonely and wanted someone to keep her company. I think exploring people who were different from her was her way of dealing with the fact that she couldn’t relate to a lot of people around her.

I’m not so different from her except that I rarely feel lonely anymore, and I always want to share this method of enjoying others with others so that it can create a larger sense of community. I’m not saying I’m entirely selfless or that I wouldn’t love free tickets to see my favorite bands, but I tend to live by a philosophy that says we all benefit more when we benefit together, and also that we create our world and are not just victims of it. If I can spread this mentality, it’s good for me and it’s good for anyone who it makes feel more positive.

Anyway, talking to my mother is a lot like this post. It starts off in one direction but before it gets to the main point, it steers off in another direction. I would like to think that I’m also better than she is at bringing things back so that there is some resolution or some point to the conversation. With her it just keeps floating from this to that and never ending. It’s actually quite fun but at the end you feel like you something missed the mark. So I try to steer our conversations by always asking “how is this related to the last topic?”. It works well. You can see where I got the “ADHD” diagnosis from.

I hope it works well when I ask myself this question while writing blogs like this and you, the reader, don’t get too lost in my many simultaneous trains of thought 🙃

We had a pretty difficult relationship when I was young. She never realized how much she wanted to control me and I always resented the amount of power she had over me. She used to be quite manipulative and tried to get me to fit into a world that I didn’t belong to.

We fixed our relationship when I started saying things like “Mom, I love you but I’m not having this conversation again” or “if you want to fight, I’m hanging up the phone and I’ll talk to you when you calm down”. It infuriated her at first and she even cut me off for three months but eventually she realized I was being more mature than she was and from that time on she’s been nothing but pleasant.

I’m really happy how she’s becoming more open minded and accepting of me as time goes by. I would love to talk to her once a week but the conversations always last AT LEAST 3 hours so I try to keep it to once or twice a month on the phone and maybe twice by message where I can disappear more easily.

How has your relationship with your parents evolved over the years?

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