Mother

 “My mother is driving me absolutely crazy,” Jenny begins. “I know that’s an old story, but it’s getting worse. I’m trying to get ready for my 50th birthday party and she can literally call me a dozen times a day. She’ll ask me how she can help me with the party and if I give her anything to do she keeps calling with one question after another. ‘Is it okay if I invite my sister? What about my neighbor? Are you having kids come? What about kids under 12? Under 5?’ And those are all separate calls. It’s driving me nuts! I’ve asked that she text me these questions but she just won’t do that. I’m at my wits end.”

“What’s your guess as to why she’s calling so often?” I ask. “Is she having some anxiety about you turning 50?”

“I never thought about that, but maybe. If I’m turning 50 she has to be getting older too. She’s always dreaded aging. But I don’t know, it also just feels like it’s what she’s always done, pretended to be helpless so I would take care of her, which has obviously gotten worse since my father died. I’m tired of being her caretaker. I have enough of my own headaches, my daughter floundering, my husband dissatisfied at work. It’s too much. But my mother is always the one who throws me over the edge. I guess that’s because I see her as so narcissistic and self-involved, never really seeing me or wanting to know what I want.”

“That’s obviously been true throughout your life.”

“Definitely! That’s why it’s so maddening. Even these questions about my party. It’s she who wants to invite her sister – and of course I’m inviting my aunt. She wants to invite her neighbor and it’s she who probably doesn’t want kids at my party.” Pause. “I’m sick of talking about her. I feel I can’t ever get her out of my head. Now she even calls about questions about her money, about her checkbook, about whether she deposited her social security check, which is of course on direct deposit. I guess she’s getting more and more infantile, wanting more and more for me to take care of her.”

Alarm bells go off in my mind. “How old is your mother?”

“Seventy-six.”

“I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but is it possible your mother is beginning to have cognitive problems?”

At least a minute passes as Jenny sits staring at me as though in shock, a deer caught in the headlights. Then she bursts into tears. “I’m terrible! I’m a terrible person, a terrible daughter. My first thought when you said that was, oh no, now I’m really going to have to take care of her! Isn’t that awful?”

“No, it’s not awful of you. It’s an understandable first thought. You’ve spent your life taking care of someone who didn’t need to be taken care of and it would indeed be horribly ironic if that person does need caretaking at the end of her life. But we may be getting way ahead of ourselves. I don’t know if your mother is having cognitive problems.”

“It’s just that it makes too much sense for it not to be true. I mean I know we all – especially as we age - lose words occasionally or misplace things – but as soon as you suggested it about my mother I knew it was true. That bit about her social security check did throw me and there have been other things. She didn’t seem to know who the President is although she’s always stayed up on current events. And it wasn’t only that she didn’t know, she didn’t seem to care either. And when she called to ask if she could invite her sister, I got short with her and said, ‘Of course I’m going to invite Aunt Mary.’ The way she reacted, I wasn’t sure she really knew her sister was my aunt.” Jenny pauses and shakes her head. “This is so terrible. What an awful way to end a life! And I’ve been getting so pissed at her lately and I’m sure you’re right, she just can’t help it.”

“But your getting pissed at her makes sense. You’ve seen her constant calling, questioning as a continuation of her playing at being helpless to elicit your caretaking.”

“But it’s not! Or maybe sometimes it still is.”

“Yes, that’s possible.”

“This is going to be hard.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I think I’ll make an appointment with her neurologist. Maybe he’ll be able to tell me how bad she really is. And if anything can be done.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“But they really can’t do anything, can they?”

“My understanding is, not much, but it never hurt to explore possibilities and get an idea of where she is at this point.”

Unnamed

I had seen Rhonda briefly six years ago when she first started her ophthalmology practice. She was anxious, unsure of whether she could handle either the patients or the necessary business responsibilities. She described herself as being an anxious person most of her life, but refused to focus much on her past, saying that she wanted to address present day concerns. Soon she found reasons not to come – she had to see a patient, go to a net-working luncheon, attend a meeting. Eventually she dropped out. I was surprised to hear from her again.

“Thanks for seeing me,” she says smiling. “A lot’s happened since I saw you. My practice is going very well, I got married and a little over six weeks ago I had a baby.”

“Congratulations. You’re right. A lot has happened.”

“My husband, Andy - he’s a physician too, an internist - he said I needed to come. He said it wasn’t normal that I haven’t named the baby yet.”

Inadvertently my eyes widen, my eyebrows raise.

“You don’t think it’s normal either,” she says, reading my surprised expression.

“I don’t know about normal, but I can see that it could be a problem. What do you call … Boy or girl?”

“Girl. You know, cutie pie, sweetie, lovey, baby.”

“And what’s your sense of why you haven’t named her?”

“I don’t want to make a mistake. I wouldn’t, for example, want to call her some sweet girlie name, only to have her be a tomboy. Or vice versa.”

“And how would you be able to know?”

“That’s the problem. I can’t. But I figure if I wait just a little longer, I’ll have more of an idea, more of a sense of her personality.”

“Does your husband get a vote?” 

“He’s wanted to name her either Amanda or Kim right from the beginning. But I don’t know, they just don’t seem to fit.”

“How do you feel about your name, Rhonda?”

“I hate it!”

Aha, I think. Perhaps we’re getting someplace. “Because …?”

“My mother gave me the name. It was her mother’s. My father put the name Alexandra on my birth certificate but she crossed it out and put Rhonda. Alexandra is so much more … more regal sounding. I hate Rhonda. In fact, I go by Rho. Not regal sounding either, but not so clunky.”

“Did you know your grandmother, Rhonda, I mean Rho?”

“She was a witch. She lived with us. My mother waited on her hand and foot. In fact, I’d say Mom often neglected me and my sister because she was so busy catering to my Grandma.”

“Sounds like you feel pretty angry at both of them.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“And how do you feel about your baby?”

“My baby?! I love her, of course. Are you saying I don’t love my baby because I haven’t named her?”

“I’m not saying that, Rho …”

“Oh God! I hope I love my baby. What made you ask that?” Rhonda says interrupting me, giving me no chance to answer her question. “I wasn’t sure I wanted a baby right now, what with my practice and all. But my husband said it was time, that we weren’t getting any younger. Do you really think I don’t love my baby? I couldn’t bear that. It’s like I’d be passing it down the line, the indifference I experienced.”

“Rho, there’s a lot going on here, which doesn’t mean you don’t love your baby. You can love your baby and still have ambivalent feelings about being a mother. You can love your baby and be scared of repeating the experiences of your past in the present. It sounds like you’re aware of all that and that certainly puts way ahead of lots of people.”

Rhonda looks down at her clenched hands. “I can see how not naming my baby could make her feel unimportant. I don’t want to do that,” she says crying.

“I’m sure you don’t, Rho.”

“I’m going to tell Andy he can name her whatever he wants.”

That’s not being any more involved, I think to myself. “What do you want to name her, Rho?”

“I don’t know. I know from what we just said that there’s more to it, but when you ask me the question point blank, I go back to where we stated, I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Sounds like naming your baby is so intertwined with your mother and grandmother, that it’s become impossible to separate them out.”

“I don’t know what to do. I feel I have to do something and I’m stuck. Do you have another session this week?”

“For sure.”

“Thanks. I guess I’ll go home and discuss it with Andy.”

“Sounds like a plan.” 

The Caretaker, Part 2

Today I return to Melinda whom I wrote about several months ago. She’s the woman whose 95 year old grandfather died and whose husband left her alone to deal with her grief. As we explored that experience, it became clear that Melinda needed to focus on others as a way to avoid her own feelings of anger and sadness. As the third girl in her family of origin, she had felt unwanted and unloved and carried around a reservoir of hurt, painful feelings.

“I feel as though I’m being torn in a dozen different directions,” Melinda begins. “The kids are a handful themselves – getting them ready for school, getting Elizabeth to tennis and dance and Mathew to softball and soccer, helping them with homework. But that’s all right. I expect that. But sometimes I think my husband is another kid. He’s so disorganized. I have to help him with our bills, get his clothes to and from the cleaners, do the laundry, remind him to take care of our cars and whatever chores he’s forgotten to do around the house. I even have to tidy the house before our cleaning woman comes. I know she’s supposed to be helping me and I guess she is, but I still have to tell her where to put things and straighten up before she comes. And my friends – I mean I love them all – but they’re always having crises – Bonnie broke up with her boyfriend, Charlotte’s mad at her husband again, Tina’s worried about her mother. And I have to get myself here as well.”

“Sounds like you’re feeling overwhelmed, Melinda, and not having any space for you.”

“Me? No, there’s no time for me. I’m too busy taking care of everyone else.”

“But I wonder if you also need to avoid you. Remember we talked about your treating yourself as you’d been treated and not allowing yourself and your feelings to matter?”

Melinda sighs. “I guess. I guess you’re right,” she says, her speech slowing.

“I notice you just slowed down a bit. That’s probably a good first step – giving yourself some time to think and feel.”

“It’s hard. I feel all this pressure, all these people making demands on me.”

“So who fills your needs, Melinda?”

“No one I guess. Makes me sad to realize that.”

“What about me, Melinda? I noticed before when you were listing all the people who were making demands on you, you said that you had to get yourself here as well. Sounds like you feel I’m another person who’s taking from you rather than giving to you.”   

“I suppose that’s true. You’re someone else I have to fit into my schedule.”

“But why is that, Melinda? Why is it that you can’t experience me as giving to you, why can’t you experience your time with me as nurturing?”

“I don’t know.” She pauses, thinking. “I don’t know why, but I suddenly thought of the time my mother forgot to pick me up from school and it felt like I waited for hours, although I’m sure I didn’t. Everyone in the family thought it was funny. It didn’t feel very funny to me.”

“I wonder if you’re saying, Melinda, that you’re afraid to allow yourself to need me because you’re afraid I’ll let you down like your mother and then laugh at you for needing me.”  

Melinda’s eyes fill with tears. “I was about to say, no, I know you wouldn’t do that, but obviously that really hit a chord in me.”

“Being needy makes you feel vulnerable.”

“That’s true. I hate feeling vulnerable. It’s scary. And weak.”

“So you run around taking care of everyone else so you don’t have to feel your own need to be cared for. You get to be the ‘strong one,’ the one who doesn’t having any needs.”

“Yup! That’s me.”

“And in the meantime, I suspect the feeling of neediness inside you gets bigger and bigger, making it even scarier for you to acknowledge, so that you have to try even harder to keep it hidden and stuffed safely away.”

“So what do I do about it?”

“Well, one thing we can do is keep a careful watch on what goes on between us. How you feel about being here, what you do or don’t do to keep me at bay and what happens if you begin to allow yourself to want or need from me.”

“That sounds hard. I can already feel myself wanting to head for the door.”

“I understand. But I will try to keep us focused on what’s going on between us, without making it too, too uncomfortable for you.” 

The Caretaker

“My grandfather died last week,” Melinda says as she settles herself into the chair.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I know how important he was to you.”

“Yes, it’s hard. I know he was 95 and failing, but I loved him so much. He was always there for me. And I always knew he loved me.”

As she talks, childhood images of my own grandfather pass through my mind: his joy at baking my birthday cakes; our walking for what seemed like miles to find my wished-for record, “I’m a Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch;” his traveling roundtrip by subway almost every weekend to pick me up in Brooklyn and bring me back to my grandparent’s apartment in the Bronx; the twinkle in his blue, blue eyes whenever he saw me. He’s been dead for over 40 years, but he lives with me still.

“His funeral was Sunday. My sisters came in which was good, but there just aren’t many people left. He used to have so many friends, but they’re all gone. And my uncles have been dead for years. Some of my friends came, but having so few people made it feel even sadder, emptier. My parents, of course, and Ron and the kids, but when we got home everyone left.”

“Everyone left?” I ask surprised. 

“Yeah. The kids wanted to go be with their friends and my sisters are staying at my parents and Ron went to play basketball.”   

“How did you feel about Ron leaving, about being alone?”

“That’s just how Ron is. He can’t sit with his feelings. He loved Pop too and he can’t just sit around and be with his feelings. He has to keep moving. He has ADHD. I get it.”

“But how did you feel about his leaving?” I persist. I “get it” too, but having known profound loss myself, I cannot imagine being without kind, loving people after the death of a loved one.  Am I being overly sensitive? Am I imposing my experience and values onto my patient? Regardless, I feel angry with Ron and wonder if I am feeling Melinda’s anger as well as my own.

“That’s Ron. Would I have preferred if he was able to cuddle with me on the couch? Sure. But if he sat there playing with his phone, that would have driven me crazy. Better that he not be there. It’s like a month or so ago when Haley had her appendectomy, and he couldn’t sit in the waiting room. I told him to go.”

I remember Melinda and I discussing that incident and my being equally incredulous – and angry - that a parent wouldn’t have needed to be present during a daughter’s surgery. There again I found it hard to believe my patient’s apparent equanimity. 

Now I think about my anger and say, “Melinda, do you notice that when I ask you how you feel, you tell me how you understand why Ron is doing whatever he may be doing. I think it’s great that you’re able to be compassionate towards your husband, but that doesn’t tell us what you’re feeling.”

She sits thoughtfully. “That’s what I always do, isn’t it? I focus on Ron or the kids or whoever else, rather than on me. I always thought it was because I was such a caretaker, but maybe I’m just avoiding what I feel.”

“And what do you feel?”

“Sad. I feel sad. Here I just lost Pop and my own husband can’t even be there for me.”

“Sounds like there’s some anger there as well.”

“Yes, there is. But mostly it’s sadness. We’ve talked about this before. I’m the third girl, the unwanted child, everyone too busy for me, except for Pop - and Grandma. And then I pick a man who’s there and not there. I mean I know Ron loves me and he’s there for me sort of, but he has his own problems, and that limits what he can give me.”

“You’re starting to move back towards focusing on Ron. What happens if you stay with your own feelings?”

Her eyes tear. “It’s way too painful,” she says quietly.

“You’re carrying around lots of pain, from the past as well as the present. I know it hurts, but it is important that we look at it and that you try to stay focused on you. Otherwise you’re treating yourself the same way you’ve been treated, not giving yourself and your feelings enough importance.”

“Wow! That’s true. What I feel matters. I’ll work on it.”