I’ve always wondered what my mother was like at my age. I love my mother more than anything, but we don’t have a huge amount of personality characteristics in common. We deal with our emotions differently, we react in social situations differently, and we analyze things differently. It has never seemed to me that at any age we would have been interested in the things. But I’m a curious person, and I believe I can never get enough information about the people I came from. So, one day a few months ago, I decided to ask my mom what she was like in college.
At first she just answered where she attended school: the University of Arizona. Well, Mom, I already knew that, and it wasn’t necessarily what I was asking. She then proceeded to say she just hung out with friends mostly, but all of this while avoiding eye contact with me and keeping her hands busy around the kitchen. My mother also insisted she was busy with school and didn’t really like going out, all while keeping her sentences very short. She tried to change the subject to what I did in college. Not only did I not particularly want to share this information, this conversation was about her. And she wasn’t getting out of it.
After more pestering on my part, my exasperated mother broke down and said once she threw a raging party at her parents’ house that got broken up by the cops. There was still no eye contact, and she seemed very reluctant and embarrassed to admit this to me. My immediate response was to laugh. Finally my mother looked at me, with a shocked expression on her face. Then she too, began to chuckle and told me the whole story as I pestered further. By the end of our conversation, she didn’t seem awkward or uncomfortable anymore. It was more like it had become a bonding experience we could both laugh over. However the last words of our conversation were, “But don’t you ever even think about doing something like that at my house!”
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