A touching story about the relationship between mother and daughter

My mother loved to see the windows clean. Clean windows and spotless curtains.

I understand her: a transparent window is an illusion of your absence and connection with nature. As if that tree were very close, within arm’s reach. And if the window is dirty, it acts as a reminder that you are cut off from the outside world, where there are cars, factories and commercial establishments.

My mom loved clean windows, but she didn’t like cleaning them. When we lived together, I cleaned. Every week. In winter, only from the inside. In other seasons, inside and out. My mother asked me to do that, and if I didn’t comply with her wish, she was offended. She cried and took tranquilizers.

My mother’s tranquilizers were a great motivation. I would clean the windows, even though I hate the task. But I hate the smell of tranquilizers even more. Call me Cinderella Carmen. Carmen Borralheira.

I got tired of cleaning windows and got married. With someone who wasn’t obsessed with cleanliness and didn’t mind dirty windows. In contrast to my mother’s clean windows, this looked very attractive. I moved from my mother’s house, I started to live with my husband in his apartment. My mother had fits of rage, she demanded my return, she expected me to get tired of the role of wife. I would see her less and less often. Because each visit was a cleaning job. And when I was tired and didn’t do the cleaning, I had to deal with her tranquilizers.

I soon had a child, and I had absolutely no time for other people’s dirty windows.

My mother was offended as usual. And I, as always, justified myself. Classic conscious codependency on my part.
“Mom, I can’t travel to another city to clean your windows. I have a family, a young son, many things. I’ll pay a cleaning lady to clean your windows.
“A strange person? she was scared.
“Yes, she will come, clean up, and go. It’s her job.
— The person will come and ask: “Are you alone?” I’ll say, “No, I have a daughter.” The person will ask, “And why doesn’t she clean her windows?” And I will die of shame.
– You’re not going to die. Explain that you want your windows cleaned every week. And that her daughter lives in another city and has a baby being breastfed…
– This is horrible. Other people washing my windows as if I didn’t do it myself.
“But you don’t clean!”
— I gave birth. Someone could clean up.
“No, I can’t.
– Do not want! And this is very shameful.
— Mom, it’s been like two months since I cleaned my own windows. Maybe three. I have no time.
“And that doesn’t embarrass you?”
– No. I have other equally important things.
— Windows are the soul of a house. Clean windows and good food. If the windows are dirty…
“I’m a terrible housewife, I’ve accepted that.
“I just don’t know who you’re after… I would die of shame…

I got irritated. And hung up the phone.

Pissing off and manipulating are functions built into my mother’s basic setup. She loved to have everything her way, and when it was most convenient for her. It looked like she didn’t need clean windows, she needed windows cleaned by me.

Once, he asked me to take his plants to the site. On Tuesday. I couldn’t on Tuesday, I could on Thursday.
— Mom, we’re going on Thursday, okay?
“I’ll be back on Thursday.” I need to go Tuesday.
“I’ll hire a driver.” I’ll pay for him to take you there.
“A strange man? What will the neighbors say? They will say, “Where is your daughter, why doesn’t she care about you?” How embarrassing.

Then I got it. My mother didn’t need to go to the farm, she needed me to take her there.
I got irritated. I resisted. I cried. Asked. Explained. Turned off the phone. She kept calling. Ultimately, she was my mother…

It took me a few years to understand that my mother’s “tyranny” was actually her subconscious desire for us to stay together, as a way to compensate for the fact that, in my 30 years of life, we had only lived together for five years. .

My mother didn’t raise me, she didn’t have time for that. But now she had and she wanted to draw me to her, but now I was the one who didn’t have the time. And it’s great when two people coincide in time and interests, at moments that cannot be postponed. But one cannot choose the most convenient time to raise a daughter; you have to raise her when she’s little. While my mother found time for this, I grew up. I no longer needed a mother to raise me, I learned to draw maternal warmth from other sources.

Our mothers’ generation, however, is not inclined to reflect and admit its mistakes. My mom wanted me to hold her, she wanted to be close, to get my attention, but she just didn’t know any other way to communicate other than giving ultimatums.

Realizing this softened me a little. I stopped getting angry, started reading between the lines. My mother invented obligations with the sole purpose of seeing me. And I offered her the chance to replace me with cleaning services and hired drivers.

Why would she want strangers in her life? She wanted her own daughter…

I started to visit her more often. I took my son and spent several days at my mother’s house, sometimes I stayed the whole week.

But she interpreted those visits in a different way: she thought I was running away from my husband, that our relationship was bad, and that these sudden trips could indicate an upcoming divorce.

“Are you going to get divorced?”
“Mom, what nonsense. We are fine.
“Well, if you don’t want to tell me, don’t.

Our mothers’ generation is never wrong, of course.

Life is an incredible boomerang. She did herself justice. I grew up in the lack of my mother’s love, and then my mother lived in an unconscious lack of my love. Life was having fun, orchestrating the situation of our own existences.

And then my mother got very sick.

At first I didn’t think it was something serious, I thought it was another one of his manipulations. Manipulation involving health is the most effective. It guarantees that I will drop everything at any time of the day or night to go running to save her. Only, in reality, no one needed to be saved. Or maybe yes, just not from the pressure surge, but from an attack of lack of love.

I once went to see her in the middle of the night, pregnant, after she had called me saying she felt bad. She was crying on the phone. I started to change clothes, argued with my husband, who tried to stop me from going. I flew on the road at night, two hours at the maximum speed allowed, to arrive and see my mother… sleeping peacefully.

But that time it was serious. My mom got really sick, she couldn’t walk without support. She first asked for a walker, then started using a wheelchair. And then she got into bed. I understood that she needed care. I started looking for a specialist nurse. But the service was too expensive. And the heavier the patient, the higher the price (because the person had to be lifted, bathed, etc.). The average cost of this type of service, taking into account my mother’s weight, was $975 per month. That’s just for the service. There were also diapers, medicine, other products… Adding everything up, it came to 1,500 dollars.

But the biggest problem I foresaw wasn’t even money. It was the fact that a stranger would take care of my mother. Not me.

I already imagined the tears on my mother’s face, saying her classic “I’m going to die of shame”.
And the neighbors saying, “But don’t you have a daughter?”

I made the decision to move in with my mother. Along with my son. It was the end of the summer, and I would be enrolling my son in kindergarten the following month. And I would take care of my mother. My husband was stunned by my decision. I did not invite him to accompany me, as I knew he would not. He had lived alone since he was 14, and with me since he was 23. He had forgotten what it’s like to coexist in someone else’s territory. And the case was moving to someone else’s house, full of rugs, crystals and endless manipulations…

“We’ll come on weekends,” I would say, in an attempt to reassure him. “Well, think I’m going to work. Work in exchange for not spending $1,500 a month.

My husband thought it was a bad decision. He was even willing to look for a second job so he could pay the nurse. And I could also work, leaving our son in a daycare.

I didn’t know how to explain to my husband that my mother didn’t need a stranger. And he didn’t know how to explain to me that, once again, I was giving myself over to manipulation.

We parted at the height of mutual misunderstanding. Family is support. And support is opening an umbrella in the middle of a storm to protect someone you’re angry at. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how angry you are: love is stronger than all negative feelings and misunderstanding.

I was under the storm and I didn’t feel anyone’s umbrella. I only had one umbrella, and I opened it over my mother’s head, not my husband’s. My mother needed more, she was sick. And I had only one mother, I wouldn’t have another.

I held on for six months. Six months of domestic hell.
I clearly am a terrible nurse. Because I’m not a nurse.
I lacked tolerance and acceptance. I didn’t even have the strength not to make an ugly face when she smelled bad, to hide my disgust, not to get irritated with the fact that I myself had chosen that lifestyle, and that no one understood my choice, that I myself too couldn’t understand.

Yes, I took care of my mother in the best way I could: I bathed her, changed her clothes, washed her belongings… It was difficult, but necessary. But every second I felt like a person trapped in an obligation.

The situation was made worse by the fact that I had long since become the mother of my spoiled mother. The pain made her irritable, cynical. She was always displeased, frowning, pushing me away from her, saying terrible things. I lived in a fog of negativity.

And I cried constantly, wronged. I would like to take off a dirty geriatric diaper and hear a “thank you”, not a shower of insults for my lack of ability to do the job.

Later I would understand how humiliating it was for my mother to become an invalid, with the unbearable feeling of being a burden, the terrible feeling of old age falling on her shoulders, relentlessly.

That was my personal Stockholm syndrome: my mother had held me hostage, offended me, hurt me, and the more she insulted me, the more I felt sorry for her, the more I feared for her. I went deep…