Today’s “Modern Love” essay in the NYT—by film producer Kelly Thomas—is not to be missed.
While I focused on grades, test scores and a life beyond rural Texas, my mother fantasized about my wedding to some well-heeled hometown boy who would one day make her a proud grandmother. She envisioned a fancy banquet-style dinner that would put her own spartan wedding ceremony and rec-room punch reception to shame. This time around, as mother of the bride, she’d wear a teal cocktail dress to complement her crystal blue eyes.
In these flights of fancy, she was ebullient and vivacious, the center of attention, while I was cast as her silent enabler. I played my part, believing that I possessed the unique ability to hold her desolation in check. While my father buried himself in the Sisyphean tasks of baling hay and breaking horses, my mother’s moods fluctuated between manic all-night baking marathons and menacing three-day silences. My role was to keep the peace, to somehow quiet her refrain that we’d all be better off without her.
And then one day I’d had it. As she started in again with the wedding plans, I impulsively blurted, “I’m not getting married, and I’m never having children!”
Thomas’s story—like life itself—doesn’t go where you think it’s going to go. RTWT.
Boy, there’s a story hook you don’t see every day.
Someone please slap that thesaurus out of her hands. “No! Bad writer! No biscuit.” But yeah, it does take an interesting turn.
Wow! Awful and beautiful.
Thanks for recommending Dan.
and yet we can’t help wishing she was fuckin’ dead…..
Easily one of the most interesting MLs I’ve read.
I feel for her father. One day he’s at the farm with the two people he loves and needs and the next, he’s alone. He’s the tragic figure in all this, but abandoned even in the story.
Holy Jesus. Reminds me a great deal of my own mother…heartbroken that I was a lesbian, unable to stop me from finding my own way in the world. She chose suicide by alcohol — a way to choose without choosing.
Wow, I did not see that coming. The headline in the NYT says “Ready to Take a Faithful Leap” so with this being rec’d by Dan, I just assumed it was yet another non-monogamy story.
Horrible mother aside, doesn’t anyone think three months is way too soon to get married?
@8: God, how awful. I’m sorry you had to suffer that.
What happened to the cat?
@12: I am so glad I was not the only one wondering about the cat.
Stunning. The best read I’ve had in some time.
While I’m sure the dad’s story is the saddest of all, this was an essay about how the event affected the writer’s future choices and relationships, most specifically what part it played into her engagement.
Beautiful essay, and I wish her and her fiance all the best.
@12, 13 – that my first thought! Should I be concerned about my penchant for being more worried about animals than people?
Anyway, what a story…Wow.
What a touching story.
My mom was the opposite of this woman. When I told her I was getting married she asked me why I would do that (I hadn’t realized the 25 years my parents were married weren’t all happy). When I told her I was pregnant she asked me why I would do that to my body (she had 8 kids).
Wow. Judging from the description of her mother in this story she was a woman suffering from Manic Depression. There are thousands of untreated cases of this disorder and it often-times ends in tragedies like the one described here.
Heart-wrenching story with a hopeful ending. I don’t think I would ever recover if I were present in the moment of a loved one’s untimely and unexpected death. The thought chills me to the bone.
Great essay.
Thank god there are other people wondering about the cat.
I like that so many of us jump to concern for animals’ well-being and treatment; it shows our capacity for empathy. It’s true that animal suffering will often rile people up more than cruelty to other humans, but I think that’s because we all understand through communication the worst that some small percentage of people are capable of (it’s usually an ugly surprise to an animal with some modicum of trust), and we have perhaps less individual power to stop cruelty in other people’s family, school, or work environments.
It makes us less-deeply-flawed human beings than, for example, the troll with all his moralistic posturing and his obsessive tangential dogging of Dan’s posts, in the complete absence of any evidence that he has ever changed anyone’s mind.
@ 20 – “Like”
Um, the cat died y’all. Obviously. Cat was thrown from he car, and the detail was thrown into the story to make sure you knew the writer was sad.
You shouldn’t need a tarot reader to tell you your mom was batshit crazy
An interesting story of growing and learning about oneself, of getting out of the traps we build for ourselves, to protect ourselves. I wish the author and her boyfriend luck and happiness!
To those worried about the father’s sad story: remember, he was the parent who — unlike the mother — could deal with what is every parent’s destiny: to see the children go. Those among you who are adults, do you still live with your parents? Do you still see your father every day? The author’s father’s story was sad, but not much more so than most other fathers’, most other parents’.
Can anyone post the cliffnotes version?
The comments by both the daughter and some folks here on the mother’s mental illness are interesting. Well over a decade ago a colleague and I started keeping informal track of how the media and pop culture in general reacted when parents killed their children. Generally, the stories — and people’s take on them — were framed in the context of (to oversimplify) killer dad was bad, killer mom was sad. Fathers were seen as killing their children as a part of their vanity, narcissism and cruelty, mothers were seen as killing their children in the throes of despair and misplaced belief that they were saving their kids from something worse. (Our tracking endeavour was prompted by two such killings: a mentally ill father had leapt with his children to their death from a highway overpass; a mentally ill mother had leapt with her child to their deaths in front of a subway train. The media and public treated the former as a monster, and the latter as a tragic figure. [Note: class may also have played a role; the former was a labourer, the latter a doctor.])
I have a sneaking suspicion that this reality is why the reaction against Casey Anthony was so virulent and ferocious: people had to come face-to-face with their certainty that she had killed her child without them having the comfortable myth that she was acceptably mentally ill. People hated her not only because they thought her a child murderer but also because she was believed to have killed for her own evil ends, and people don’t like to face that mommies might kill for evil ends the same way that daddies are said to solely do.
I do not know whether the mother in this story is mentally ill to the point where she was not in control of her own actions. The writer herself and some folks here seem to wish to give her the benefit of the doubt. But we shouldn’t pussyfoot around the possibility that mom was no different than some evil bastard who kills his girlfriend rather than let her be happy with someone else or his kid rather than let the wife have custody.
And she and David live happily and non-monogamously ever after.
@22, have you met sarah68? XD
Yes, you’re probably right. But hope is the thing that floats. Maybe the cat died peacefully of old age some time before (or at least that’s what Kelly Thomas’s mom wanted her to think!), and Kelly was bringing the empty carrier to college for the new kitten she would share with her housemates.
@7, I noticed that too. Hopefully it’s just to keep the narrative focused.
The Modern Love feature doesn’t allow for sprawling narratives, just short essays. That’s likely why the author didn’t write about how what happened affected her father.
@18: Oh, that’s a wonderful diagnosis from an armchair psychologist.
Especially the part where it’s not called “manic depression” anymore, but “bipolar disorder”. And if you knew anything at all, you would also know the reason for the change.
I’m also certain that it had absolutely *nothing* to do with “you destroyed all my dreams, now I’m going to kill us both, you ungrateful bitch!” It’s pretty clear to *me* that this was premeditated, and that she drove them both over the first available cliff or bridge, just like in Thelma and Louise.
Just like the little hints in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (the boys filling their pockets with stones while waiting for the ceremony, for example), there are indications that something is more than a little off about Mom and this won’t be a garden-variety tale of an adult child learning to establish boundaries with a difficult mom who makes everything about herself.
When a parent is difficult, something happens to the rest of the family — especially the children. The entire family dynamic becomes about managing the risk in various ways ranging from minimizing contact to walking on eggshells to keep the person calm, while realizing that at some point you’ll screw up and say the wrong thing, or a pretext will be found. Kelly’s mom seems not to have been the angry tantrum sort of difficult person but rather the type who creates a world around herself to replace the authentic, unrewarding one — with both Kelly and her father taking on the job of humoring her.
Either way, it’s something Dan should factor into his prejudice against parents divorcing. It is terrible to “go there” and have the system all in your family’s business. But it’s also terrible to keep children in a home where they cannot relax and be themselves. It changes who the child is, and this clearly happened to Kelly. It’s obvious that pressuring her to indulge Mom on the trip wasn’t the first time Kelly’s dad “gave his kid a job.”
McKaydelyn:
I don’t think it’s fair to say that Dan is “prejudiced” against divorce, only that it is more often than not upsetting to the kids and so if a sex problem (note: sex problem) can be solved by bed-time outside the marriage then it isn’t worth ending an otherwise happy marriage over incompatible sexuality.
I wonder what efforts the mother made to get mental health help, and whether state services ever got involved. If I were a father I’d be terrified of seeking mental health help in the context of a divorce simply because once they professionals are involved they tend to act to keep the children away from a mentally ill dad and do their best to help mentally ill mothers stay with their kids, even where the evidence screams that that isn’t a good idea. (There were two notorious child murders [3 dead kids] recently in Canada where just that sort of thing happened, including one case where the mother was the only suspect in the father’s murder and who had been on suicide watch in jail.) Depending on her local social services (and they can, I concede, be the bastard stepchildren of nannies and nazis in some jurisdictions) she might have been helped. Maybe dad wanted to get her help but was worried that they’d take his kids if the mother was mentally ill.
What interesting comments. Kelly is my sister and it was my mother who was bat-shit crazy. By the way, Kitty-Kitty was never found after the wreck, although Kelly put flyers for months aftewards and the good people of Blufton, Ohio kept an eye out for her. Yes, my father is a good man and is happily married today to a childhood friend. My sister and I always knew something was wrong with our mother from early ages. Too bad manic depression was so poorly understood during the early 90’s. Kelly and David are perfect for each other and I am so thankful thank Kelly let her guard down enough to love and be loved! She deserves it!