the parents trapped
I spoke to my Mum on the phone yesterday. It was the first time we have spoken for over two months. We normally speak weekly.
The last time, I had cut off a telephone conversation with my Dad abruptly because he had started down the path of spouting nonsense about "most of the people arriving illegally on boats are Albanian drug dealers".
I just couldn't hack struggling with either letting it pass, or arguing about it with him any more, so I put the phone down, and I hadn't phoned them since.
She was trying to make peace.
It was partly my fault I suppose, for straying away from the safety of such subjects as gardening or sport, aches and pains, and interactions with the medical establishment—although even that can spawn sly bigotry and coded racism; for example, the doctors "weren't English".
We had been talking about him going to some forties nostalgia event in their home town, with marching bands, military parades, WW2 vehicles and Union Jack flag waving, and that somehow became a discussion about pride in your country. Probably I had sounded less than impressed by the jingoistic, overt flag-shagging nationalism nonsense it sounded like.
Somehow, it moved on to how to get 'the illegals' to be in the front line of the UK defence first if anyone invaded. Presumably the idea being for them to be shot first. Yes, I know.
We didn't fall out. I just got tired of listening to it, and I unilaterally ended the call mid sentence.
After some preliminary niceties of the "How are you?" type, my Mum tentatively probed as to why I hadn't spoken to them since 'the fall out'.
So I told her. I had dealt with it by letting it slide before, even if it made me seethe, but I was in the right mood to say it now.
Me: I can't cope with the conflicted feelings I get when I am speaking to you, people I am meant to love, but am hearing the abhorrent things you say. You're as bad as each other. I'm sorry but I won't accept racism or homophobia from anyone else, yet I am expected to gloss over it or ignore it if I hear it from you? Because you're family? No. I'm just not doing that any more.
Mum: Well, we all have different points of view on these things. We grew up in different times.
Me: Mum, times moved on and you haven't. I was brought up by you and Dad in the 1970's, and the attitudes to people and their differences, even my own attitudes then, make me shudder now. I've grown and learned and sorted myself out since, but neither of you two have. You've been hanging on trying to pretend you're still somehow right, while the world disagrees and changed around you. You're nearly eighty, and all you've done is wished the world was the same as it seemed to you when you were ten. You even stopped watching Strictly when they started having same-sex couples. You loved Strictly!
Mum: Well, it's not right, shoving that sort of stuff at everyone like it's normal.
Me: Oh my God... mother, it is normal! You can't make it not normal by you ignoring it and wishing it wasn't.
Mum: Well, I don't think so, and your Dad and I are too old to change now. I'd never say anything in front of anyone though, so you don't have to worry about that, if you are. I know we can go on a bit once we get started, but that's only among ourselves, we're polite to all the doctors, wherever they're from.
Anyway, we're all different, we know you have a different view about these things to us, but we're family, and you can't change that. We just have to get on.
Me: Oh mother... we're all different. Precisely. Not just me and you and Dad, the whole fucking world. Can't you see that it makes no sense? Aren't you open to trying to learn more, ever? Just try and understand?
Mum: Don't swear. We can't help it. Anyway, you'll have to understand us. I see all the things in the news and worry about what sort of world the grandchildren are going to be in when we're gone. Are you going to phone your Dad? I'll speak to him and tell him to stay away from politics.
Me: Sigh... It's not politics, Mum. It's just right and wrong. We'll see.
Mum: Well, at least we've cleared the air.
It sort of ended there.
But we haven't "cleared" anything, Mum. I'm still confused and conflicted. You are both still racist bigots, and I don't want to talk to racist bigots. But you are my parents and I feel I ought to talk to my parents. But I know that all your conversations have this apparently unchangeable and unpleasant attitude beneath it, this misplaced undercurrent of illogical fear, based on hearsay and not actual experience. And that makes me sad and angry
This was the first time, after many smaller incidents—previously dealt with by the conflict-avoidant diplomatic department of my brain—that I had explicitly discussed with her just what it was that I found so offensive.
And where did it get me?
It was brick wall and bashing my head against it time.
I probably won't phone them for a while.
Written by a real person, em dashes and all.
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