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Thursday, March 19, 1998

Insecurity obscures mother's talents

QUESTIONS: Society can make adolescents hate parent's unique quirks

I spend a lot of time loathing and loving the fact that the human race is such a slew of adaptable putty-heads. I look back at where I'm from and what I was taught to value: all of the sparkly-Mercedes driving, Neiman Marcus-shopping, two-story ocean-front home-owning baloney that leaves a community paralyzed in its need for things to define themselves. I remember being blind to all of the conditioned madness. I'm pretty much a putty-head.

When I was 10 I was angry because my mother didn't wear eyeliner or have Estee Lauder pink acrylic nails like the other mothers I saw. I was bitter because she rarely wore anything besides school-teacher dresses with big pockets in the front and because she drove a dumpy car. I was mortified that my mother was not glamorous.

In elementary school I loathed having my mother pick me up in front of the playground. I could never decide whether it was worse to walk home (I had to pass the high school and there were tenacious attacks from the angst-ridden bandos) or get into her dilapidated Capri in front of my peers. When the latter would happen, and it usually did, I would seethe with passionate hate, abnormal for a 10-year-old. It was not like the other parents' cars. There was an inch-and-a-half of Cheerios and other organic litter on the floor. (My younger brother still felt compelled to snack without coordination.) Inside, the marigold stuffing poured out of the vinyl sun-cracked seams; outside it was a muted teal. I hated it because there was only an AM radio that played '50s music, because my mother was totally unfazed and because she would drive around singing out of tune, bongo-ing her thumbs on the shredded steering wheel. I hated the name Capri. It was a wannabe wussy sportscar. I hated it because my mom would laugh, throw us some Cheerios, sing louder and say, "Honey, I'm not going to spend a lot of money on a car you kids eat and slobber and spill in!" My little brother would grin in cahoots with her, with Cheerios stuck to his T-shirt like ornaments on a Christmas tree. It wasn't like my best friend's mom's car, that sleek white Mercedes with the sunroof, the tapedeck and the Bruce Springsteen album ("Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.") we liked to listen to. Her car smelled like perfume. My mother didn't wear perfume.

I loved to ride in that Mercedes. I loved the leatherette cushion that pulled out in the center and separated my best friend and me into equal spaces.

The back seat of the Capri had an almost complete lack of interior. The majority was springy yellow foam. (Before having children my parents had Boxers.) I would remain enflamed in the back, watching my brother and his floppy red lips sing along to the totally uncool '50s station. The nincompoop didn't even know the words. His vocal stylings consisted of elongating the vowels. Like a family dog, he loved getting to ride in cars. The excitement took over and for some reason his legs would stick straight out, sort of paralyzed in front of him, so all I saw was his bobbing blond head and his catatonic blue-and-yellow Zipps tennis shoes.

I spent a lot of my youth in this dismal state - a tacit repulsion from everything related to my mom because there was no way my mom was cool. Just a couple of squinting eyes and crossed arms over my chest - that was me. As years went by, I found other things to hate. I embraced magazine-dispensed style and mocked my mother's skills. She was a home-economics teacher. - I made it my duty to negate activities like sewing, cooking, '50s music, (insert anything she liked or was good at).

It's 1998 and the Capri was traded in ages ago. I can't sew a button but I make a decent stir-fry and take pleasure in Otis Redding. It's just part of the cycle, I guess. I let my environment dictate a lot. I don't know why I wasn't more like my brother, all slobber and grins, but I know now what a powerful woman my mom is. I've watched her sew me new pants, grow 12 varieties of roses and prop over a pineapple upside-down cake that would make Julia Child whimper. I've seen her paint a house, and my father has shown me a turquoise ring she made for him when he came home from Vietnam.

All those skills that I made such an effort to cover up have become valuable to me. They make up her texture. They are her edges that don't often show at first glance. They are not well coifed or dusted with Estee Lauder pink blush. I've realized that when I was a little girl I wanted a hybrid of Kathie Lee Gifford and Cheryl Tiegs for a mother. I wanted to watch someone wake up and "put on her face." I guess I learned this from my friends, or television or something. I guess that's what irks me.

As a kid, how did I morph into such a shallow, judgmental brat? Is there a remedy for insecurity? Did it happen to everyone? How come after adding fractions we didn't have Elementary Emerson? ("Alright boys and girls, repeat after me, 'Insist on yourself; never imitate' and for extra credit, who can tell me what 'heed thy private dream; thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and the skepticism' means?") I went home last weekend, drove around a lot, thought about the flying Cheerios and my brother's Zipps. I was thankful that my mother had texture - and for the first time, I really missed that Capri.