Season of Stress

You have to see this video first before you read any further.

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Every year around November, my Mom gets moody. The holidays seem to stress her out, and she does her best to stress everyone else. I feel bad for her, since she is getting very old and I guess she has a lot of things on her mind from the past. However, my grandmother (her mother) used to go into that same funk too. The bottom line is that nobody can laugh, joke around, have fun, or look happy during November and December or else Mom gets the feeling that we are making fun of her. A couple of days ago we were all together driving to go shopping, and my wife started dancing and laughing in the car, my daughter did also, and I joined in too. A few seconds later, the voice of Mom said: "I GUESS IT IS EASY FOR ALL OF YOU TO LAUGH AT ME NOW. NOW THAT I CAN'T GIVE YOU ANY MORE MONEY, YOU CAN MAKE FUN OF ME. ENJOY YOURSELVES, I WON'T BE AROUND MUCH LONGER TO BE YOUR CLOWN." Needless to say, those remarks put a damper on our fun. Saying anything to my Mom is pointless, as she just turns everything around on us. Like when we said that we weren't laughing at her, Mom said "It is the three of you against me. I guess I am crazy?" There is no upside to that discussion.

The bottom line is usually the same: If you are having fun, you are bad. If you are laughing, you are laughing at her. If you think something is funny, it is because you are mean and are making fun of her. During the holidays is also when my Mom usually starts feeling sick and telling us that she thinks she will be dying soon. Of course, one of these days when she says that she is dying, she will be right and we will all feel really bad if we don't take all her complaints very seriously. However, this feeling that she is about to die any day is stressful. I want my Mom to live many years, and I hope she feels better. I know we all want that here, but Mom never seems to think she gets enough love. She has told me that I don't treat her with love, or that I am not sensitive to her feelings, or that I don't show that I care. Maybe I don't, but busting my chops about it for 44 years is a bit much. I have gotten used to her personality, why can't she get used to who I am?

Then you have to consider that between a mother and a daughter-in-law there is some friction. My wife is very understanding and she loves my Mom very much, but my Mom always has that ability to put up a social barrier between her and others. I am not sure where it comes from, but if you disagree with Mom, she can put up an attitude as if the reason you disagree is because you are of a lower social class or just plain dumb. So there is no way to win an argument with Mom. I really wish that in her last years she would spend more time being happy. I always imagined grandmothers as being like Aunt Bee from the Andy Griffiths show. Then again, maybe my Mom used to wish that I would be like Opie. Even if some of Mom's complaining is too much, the fact is that she has arthritis and she had cancer, so she probably is in pain. I love my mother a lot, and I hope she has many more years ahead of her.

I imagine a lot of my Mom's attitude comes from her mother (my grandmother). I recall growing up with my grandmother living with us when she was in her sixties, seventies, eighties, (she died when she was 92). Grandma's idea of spending a great time with me when I was a kid was if I just sat still and never said anything or moved. Grandma loved to check in on me every ten minutes to ask me if I wanted any food. If I was watching television and laughed, it bothered her. If a friend came over and we laughed, that was definitely the beginning of the end. She would soon be over us making nasty remarks and my friends would soon be looking to leave. If I offered a friend any soda or anything else, grandma would pop by to say "Did you buy the food in this house? Do you work and earn any money? If these kids come here hungry then they need to go back home and eat their own food and soda. This isn't a restaurant." This was my grandmother. I guess part of her problem was that she lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s and was poor as shit during that time.

I had always heard that the family was very close back in the old days when they lived in Cuba, but maybe they were mean to their neighbors? I never really understood how they all had so many happy stories about the love and friendship in the old country and yet Grandma was a pretty mean old lady. Even though she could be friendly and happy, that was not very often. She spent most of her older years complaining about her health and complaining about other people. Grandma generally had a harsh tongue. If she did not like someone, she would basically make-up what he or she was "probably" like based on tell-tale signs that she observed in the way people handled themselves. Unfortunately, I learned a lot of her attitude from her. She would go anywhere and tell you what she thought about anybody. She had an eye for details, and based on some little thing about a person's dress, hairstyle, etc., Grandma would come up with an entire psychological profile. She reminded me of Sherlock Holmes if he had been a somewhat mean and cynical guy. Sometimes I would take her out just to hear the things she would say about people. I thought it was funny, but then I started thinking like her and that has made it harder for me to make friends.

My grandfather came to America during that era and supposedly had to sleep in public parks for a couple of weeks until he got a job. Eventually he owned a hardware store but I guess the years of poverty must have had a really harsh effect on his wife (my grandmother). I remember my grandfather as being a very nice guy. He used to take me to Times Square in New York and also to buy comic books and toys. He also would take me to the park to play stickball or punchball. He was a good guy, but he died when I was only eleven. I have posted a black and white photo of my Tata back when he was a youth sometime in the 1920s. The death of my grandfather further alienated my grandmother, since the only person who understood her was gone. I always loved my grandmother, even though I think that some of the things she said were very negative. I think somehow that was the only way she knew to impart her life experiences. In spite of what I am remembering here, there were many positive moments too. Unfortunately, I think that most of the time people tend to remember the traumatic, shocking, or negative moments longer. That is kind of sad, especially for older people who have more time to spend with their memories once many of the people their own age have passed on. I hope that she and my grandfather are in a better place, may they rest in peace. I wish that I could make people feel better with words or thoughts or good intentions. Even though it may not sound like I am very thankful, I really am glad to be alive and to have a family that loves me and to love them back. I guess no family is perfect, and some families probably have more issues than others. A lot of these issues could improve if I could deal with people stressing me out in a better way. Learning to understand the way people stress me out would help me a lot. If I did not react to stress, all of us would be happier. For everything I have, thanks God!