⌂ My Mother, My Rant, and the Unwelcome Christmas Gift
On standing up for yourself (and your clothes) yet staying kind
A decade ago, when my mother was still alive and her mind not yet ravaged by Alzheimer’s, she and I were good at criticizing each other.
She disliked how I unstyled my hair, failed to grab a hanger when leaving my coat on the rack, and neglected to use anti-wrinkle creams. She would voice her disapproval freely, sometimes even before saying hello. “You’re wearing that old thing?” she would ask upon my arrival.
But my mother wasn’t a monster. Even as a teenager, I sensed that her criticism was insecurity in disguise. She condemned in others what she refused to allow in herself, the stains of imperfection that could so easily be avoided. I would be more successful in life, she believed, if only I followed her rules.
Well-intended or not, I criticized my mother’s criticism. I wanted none of it. I found it deplorable how she tried to elevate herself by judging others. She denounced the newsreader’s outfits, scorned people who ate French fries on the street, and railed against “stupid women” who drove too slowly. She sought reassurance by putting others down, expecting me to agree with her. But I considered her negative opinions shallow and misinformed—a sign of weakness.
My mother was a warm and dedicated friend to many. She enjoyed art and traveling, which opened her up to all sorts of people with opinions different from her own. She was polite and generous. But her self-righteous streak could be hard to bear.
One December night, Daniel and I were visiting her in her Dutch suburban row house, my childhood home since I was nine and my parents divorced. I felt uneasy, as I often did at her table. During dinner, she had pushed her corrections at me, and although I’d dismissed them as the confident grownup I believed myself to be, I had become small again under her gaze. A child.
My mother reached over the table and touched the cuff of Daniel’s sweater.
“What a pity,” she said, rubbing the blue cashmere wool. “That always happens, doesn’t it? You buy something nice and it falls apart.”
I bristled. “It’s not falling apart, Mama,” I said. “It’s just a bit of fraying. No big deal.”
She made a face I knew too well. My crazy daughter, the face said.
“Have you been too busy with work to shop for new clothes?” she asked Daniel.
He looked at me. His face said, Let it go. He knew how my unfiltered opposition could spoil the air for hours or bring her to tears. I’m a strong debater and can get ruthless once I gather steam. But I refused to let this go. My mother was not to criticize my husband.
Not being understood by her had become a source of pride for me.
“We don’t think about clothes like you do, Mama,” I said. “Fraying at the cuffs doesn’t bother us. I think it’s a total waste to discard a perfectly fine sweater for something so trivial.”
My face said, We’re morally superior to your vanity. Her nerves went taut under her creamed skin.
Daniel smiled, as though I’d made a joke. He said, “Fraying is fashionable nowadays. Many designers give their clothes a distressed look. Jeans with holes and jackets with safety pins. These signs of wear come at no extra cost. I’m just lucky.”
My mother wrinkled her brow, probably questioning his sense of fashion. “Listen,” she said. “You cannot wear a sweater like that.”
“Yet somehow, I am,” Daniel said softly to me, knowing the pun would be lost on her.
“It’s not proper,” my mother went on. “People will think you’re poor.”
I breathed in and out, biting my tongue. Stop correcting him, I wanted to tell my mother. But how could I say it without correcting her? My judgment of her behavior would bring me down to her level. And I didn’t want to become like her.
My mother appeared disappointed when I seemed to give up the fight. Did I consider her too ignorant to disagree with? The reality was worse: Not being understood by her had become a source of pride for me.
We managed to move the conversation to better subjects, such as the unexpected, belated, and much deserved popularity of James Salter’s prose in recent Dutch translations. Literature connected us. We ended up finishing the expensive wine my mother had bought for us in high spirits.
Rebellious souls make our world a better place.
The next morning, while saying goodbye in the hallway, my mother offered Daniel a red wool sweater.
“Consider it an early Christmas gift,” she said.
The sweater in her hands was still in its original packaging. She must have bought it for another man, my stepfather probably. But he was no longer alive.
Daniel was about to take the sweater from her waiting hands, when my face made him stop.
Don’t do it, my face said. Don’t let her win. Accepting that sweater means agreeing with someone whose opinion you don’t share. She says it’s improper to have fraying cuffs, but you happen to like that sweater. Stand up for it! The wool is soft. The color is great. I love that fraying thing and you in it. The sweater has kept you warm on many occasions and has become an intimate part of our life. My mother is stupidly afraid that your fraying sweater will make people think badly of you and by proxy ruin her good standing—your fraying sweater, one big disgrace to my family! Well, let people think what they want. You’re an odd one in the bunch anyway. Always have been, always will be. And I’m grateful for that. Your sweater doesn’t have to lie for us, doesn’t have to mask who you are. In fact, I think you wear this sweater to stand out. The fraying is intentional—imagine that! You’re not afraid of your singularity. You display your quirks with ease. So, please, don’t accept that awful new sweater from my mother. Acknowledge her generosity, but kindly refuse it. Tell her that she’s reading this situation wrong. It’s her fault and not the sweater’s. If your fraying cuffs communicate anything, it’s that you don’t follow the laws of convention. Tell her to give that new sweater to a homeless person who will appreciate its pure value: the wool’s warmth. Tell her you will hold on to your fraying possessions, your minority opinions, your appreciation of whatever is perceived to be odd. The fact that your fraying sweater has the power to offend my mother only proves that you should keep wearing it. Rebellious souls make our world a better place. Tell her!
But Daniel wasn’t taking any orders from me. If I wanted to disobey my mother, I had to do so myself. He accepted the sweater from her waiting hands, thanked her, and smiled. He was an American after all, obliging on command. My mother, too, smiled. Excellent social skills, both of them. But I couldn’t smile. I was too disgusted by us all.
“Sorry, Mama,” I said. “I don’t like the color. I don’t want him wearing that.”
It wasn’t a lie, the red was too bright, but my chest felt as though I was holding a scream inside.
The new sweater switched hands again from his to hers. She held it against her body, acting spurned, as though I’d been the one who’d been unpleasant.
Back home in Paris, where Daniel and I lived at the time, I kept thinking about my mother’s unwelcome gift and my unexpressed rant. Why had I not told her the truth? Why had I pretended that her incessant criticism was no big deal?
Time passed, years I think, before I realized that I’d made the right call. I was never going to change my mother. All I could do was control my own response. And did I really want to rant at her, give in to rage, and get us both upset? A calm yet stern refusal of her correction was the better way for us both.
This insight helped me later when my mother fell ill with Alzheimer’s and became even more critical of the people she loved. If I had reacted negatively to each of her complaints, we would have ended up on planet anger. Instead, I distracted her from her frustrations, and she let me, even when she sensed what I was doing. We chose to keep the harmony and not build resentments. We chose to stay kind.
I held her hand as she died more than three years ago. When Daniel and I went through her closets later, we found the red sweater. Believe it or not, but it made us smile.
(Part of the text above was previously published in a different form in Atticus Review.)
Desk Journeys aka Reading Recommendations
Since I mentioned James Salter in the essay above, I’d like to recommend Light Years (1995) to everyone. It’s a beautiful nuanced portrait of a marriage and of the two individuals within. I remember reading this novel while learning how to write in English and I fell in love with the prose. Salter taught me that you don’t need long, complex sentences to write in a poetic style. It’s all about sound and rhythm, using the right words at the right moment, and trusting your ear to make things sing.
“The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others?”
—James Salter in Light Years
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Time to Say Goodbye
I’m in Florida for the holidays, reconnecting with family members I haven’t seen in years. Some people came down with the flu and one was hospitalized, but the Christmas Party was not canceled and we managed to deeply appreciate one another’s company.
I hope you’re enjoying this last week of the year, or, if that’s too much to ask, get through it without too much pain. You’ll hear from me again when I’m back on the other side of the country: San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.
All my best,
Claire
P.S. Have you ever felt criticized by a (Christmas) gift?
Oh, these critical, judgemental European mothers of a certain era... 🤨
My mother is not Dutch; she is a Southern woman, through and through, but her criticism is exacting.
Is this a universal language shared by mothers of her generation?
I related very well with you about the unexpressed rant.
I have felt that way many times in my mother’s presence.
Mothers and daughters will forever remain a tangled bond. Beautiful writing.