The Standard Respect of a Stranger Policy

On February 13, 2016, Basil and I were getting ready to go to the movies when my phone lit up with text messages. I don’t usually get a ton of text messages and when I saw so many popping up at once, I was worried something was wrong. It turned out that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. I suppose it speaks to my interest in the law that friends thought of me enough to send a text when one of my least favorite jurists of all time passed on. In addition to friends, my mother also sent a text message about Scalia.

While getting a text message from one’s mother is not notable for many, it is an infrequent occurrence for me, as I stopped regular contact and correspondence with my mother ten years ago.

Announcing this kind of discontinuance might conjure images of drama: screaming, fighting, slamming of receivers, ultimatums. But like T.S. Eliot’s end of the world, the decision to change the circumstances under which I would communicate with my mother were quiet, conducted with calm. I had gone to visit my mother in Phoenix at the house I grew up in. Although our visit seemed to go okay based on the standards of my family (no physical violence, no objects thrown), I received an e-mail hours after I left detailing how deeply disappointed in me she was. I was fat, I was dating someone who was fat, and I was throwing my life away with my current profession of retail coffee shop manager. I remember she employed some kind of imagery in her email about how I was driving down the wrong road, or a dangerous road, or a rocky road, and she was imploring me to make a U-turn. I was headed for disaster.

Like many proverbial straws which break the camel’s back, an email of this kind does not seem that devastating on its own. Most people disagree and fight with their parents. Many parents do have to tell their kids they do not agree with the decisions their kids are making. But this was a majority of the communication with my mother and I: I was a disappointment, a terrible kid bound for disaster for most of my high school, college, and post college career. With my father gone, I did not see any reason to continue speaking with her if this was going to be our standard exchange.

So I responded to my mother’s email, letting her know my new condition for speaking and interacting with her: I wanted to be shown the same amount of respect one would show a perfect stranger. I would not require anything but the most pedestrian level of kindness. Although I felt I was owed some explanations and some apologies, I indicated in my e-mail I did not expect my mother to ever provide these to me. Fine. Instead, our communication could comprise of acceptable cocktail party banter. It was the only solution I could think of for the lifelong problem that was our relationship.

I do not remember if she responded to that e-mail or not. I know I received a few angry, likely wine-fueled e-mails, time stamped in the middle of the night a few months thereafter. I would open them, see the content did not adhere to my conditions, and delete them. After a lifetime of feeling paralyzed when my mother would act this way, my new rule, just like the regulatory guidelines I now study and love at work, gave me a process to apply to our interactions.

She found one of my previous blogs and left a nasty comment. I deleted the comment, because I would not let a stranger leave a nasty comment on my blog. She tried to friend me on Facebook a few times, and also tried to have her hairdresser friend me. But as I do not become friends with strangers on Facebook, I denied these requests.

We saw each other at my Uncle Ben’s funeral about three years ago, as he was her brother. As I attended the wake after the service, I sat at a table with her and my father’s parents, as this seemed acceptable by my rule–after all, no one else was clamoring for the seat at our table, so any stranger could have taken it. We each had a few drinks and then we went our separate ways.

About two years ago, Mom texted and said she was talking to some man who lived in Columbus via an internet dating site. She was going to come to Columbus to visit him: could we have dinner? I thought about my rule and instead proposed meeting for drinks somewhere, as this seemed more appropriate for a stranger/unfamiliar acquaintance. I also agreed on condition that Basil could accompany me, as I felt confident I would be safe with him. She ended up canceling the trip and “dumping” the guy (lucky him). She has not tried to visit since.

Random text messages, like the one about the death of Justice Scalia, are the extent of our communications these days. Like most of her actions for my entire childhood, I am never certain what will spur her to action: will it be Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize (yes) or will it be Hillary Clinton losing the election (no)? She has asked for career advice (should she ask for better benefits or a higher salary when negotiating for most recent contract RN job) and sent some random pictures (a shot of downtown Sacramento early in the morning).

My mother will never be remembered as someone who enjoyed following instructions. One of her routine sayings I quote often when I participate in some minor rule bending, like taking some outside food/beverage into a place that doesn’t allow it, is “Are you going to let some sign tell you what to do?” She got fired from a RN teaching job at a hospital once when she refused to wear the socks she was required to wear as part of her uniform. Not because the socks were uncomfortable or she has some fundamental beliefs about socks, but just because someone told her she had to wear them and she thought it was “a stupid rule”.

I guess she never really wanted to follow my “respect me like a stranger” policy either, but I left her little choice. I imagine we are ambassadors from two countries which fought in a bloody war for years before reaching a fragile truce: our communications are conducted only when necessary or just for decorum. We both understand we can manage nothing more.