Quote:
|
Originally Posted by galoisien (shouldn't I be just about out of adolescence right now?) |
Jonrie, I've read a few of your other threads... based on these and on the common lore about adolescent brain development, I imagine you have a ways to go. This is not intended as criticism; you are in development, as we all are. But as far as understanding one another, I can tell you from personal experience that
you won't really understand
her until you've gone through more than just a few extra years of life. When you have a job, a child, a mortgage, bills that you must pay in order to continue having food, water, and shelter for the young child who can't eat unless you feed him... your mother will look and sound quite different to you.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by galoisien It's just work, designing and inspecting US Navy destroyers, nothing exciting. |
Is it any wonder she doesn't spend a lot of time discussing her work with you?
A lot of things that seem new and fascinating to us at 19 seem trite and maybe foolish when we look back on them at 40. That's just part of growing up -- just as you might have difficulty now indulging a 5-year-old in endless drawn-out conversations about, say, the battle statistics of various Pokemon monsters. During your childhood, she probably spent a lot of her time indulging you in such conversations. Maybe she's looking for the Reader's Digest Condensed Versions when she chats with you on the phone.
If you want to connect more deeply with your mother about the things that interest you, I would suggest writing letters. Email is ok, but letters are better; we tend to treasure tangible communications from the people we love. Holding a letter, she can tell right away how long it's going to take to read it. So she can sit down with a letter over her dinner or morning tea and read all about your adventures with MSG when she has the time... and she can (and probably will) re-read it several times. You might mention what's going on in your head -- your worries about jobs and the future, or whatever is important to you -- and ask her some open-ended questions about how
she handled such things when she was younger. See if you don't get a letter back from her, with things she'd never have told you over the phone. It could be the start of a really nice custom between the two of you.