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My mother asked me to drive her to a business dinner tonight. I did because I had to.
Sometimes, it's depressing how business-like our relationship is.
Talking over the silence, she told me how her job was shit and how no one has any morality left. She brought up an example that outlined her flawed sense of logic to a tee:
She has a friend at the office, her secretary maybe. She is aboriginal, and had a shitty childhood that she is just coming to terms with, as a forty-year old woman. A week ago, she snapped at a tech support guy. This guy brought it up with my mother, who defended the woman BECAUSE she had a hard life and felt pity.
I argued, futilely, that just because she got the short end of the proverbial stick doesn't mean she has the right to chew people out whenever things go wrong. There is no reason, as I see it, she cannot leave her problems at home like everyone else.
This got up started talking about how she is always there to help people, especially her children. If Sophia or I called, lost somewhere at two in the morning, she would not hesitate to give either of us a ride. I volleyed with the fact that I would be more likely to hitchhike or walk home instead. I told her that I've never called because I exhaust all other options before I have to call. Sophia, on the other hand, knows that she is being waited on, hand and foot, and calls first, and when you get there, she asks (commands politely) if you would drive her friends home too (already having promised them a ride). If, by sheer miracle, my mother says no, it is never even an outright no, but rather a "call your father/ call your brother" kind of no.
My mother said she is working on that. What she meant was that, in a few months, when Sophia has her licence, she will say, "Take your father's car for the night."
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be.
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