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You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
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Go Ahead, Cry!
"Don't cry, Felix. Don't cry!" This is a little chant my mother does when Felix is losing it. I'm sure you will be shocked to hear that he doesn't tend to let this sort of coaching have any effect on his state of mind.
This drives me crazy. It shouldn't. It's just another useless unfollowable tidbit being lobbed at my kid who doesn't know what she's talking about anyway. I'm used to this. In New York it is physically impossible to avoid being offered these tips unless one is a deaf, blind shut-in. And even then. . .
But "Don't cry" makes me want to crawl out of my skin and I have no idea why. She's been saying it since he was a few days old. He'd be bleating away and she'd keep telling him in a preoccupied tone to stop crying and while they had no complaints with this situation, my blood pressure would spike.
If a telephone was ringing, ringing, ringing and I wandered through my parents' house, blandly repeating "Someone's calling. Someone's calling. Someone's calling" over and over, interrupting all conversation that hoped to be happening around the incessant ringing, someone would surely scream or pop me one. But I can't really say anything to my mother. It's been going on for 13 months and I can't conjure a gentle way to say: "knock it off." And my problem with it (weak protests over the months) inevitably gets read as my lacking something in the humor department anyway. (I suspect part of the reason this makes me insane is a physiological prickliness induced by the sound of his crying, but knowing that should make me less inclined to violence, not more.)
Over the weekend there was a "Don't cry" incident on the street and I offered up a whiney, witless rejoinder when I couldn't control myself any longer. I said "Mom!" in a rather peevish tone. That single word made my mother stop speaking to me. She bounced comments off my husband while we continued to poke our heads into a few art galleries and then when it was time to go, she literally ran down the street to get away and has not been heard from since.
I don't know how I offended so deeply. My mother has impressively thick skin that I have admired for decades. This is a woman who is impervious to my sibling's shrieks of agony and threads of self-immolation if she picks a tidbit of something tasty off his plate to sample. But something about my protest was deeply offensive.
Now that I'm a parent, I know that I have a still latent superpower. I will be able to cause my child more embarrassment and frustration than anyone else on earth, except perhaps his father (unlikely, though). I can only hope that I can master my abilities and use them for good and not just to endlessly baffle and confuse my kid.
posted by Elise at 11:24 AM
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