So, in case ya’ll didn’t know, I’m southern. Painfully so, only an hour and a half from falling off in the Gulf of Mexico if you set out for a late night drive. The South, the land of monograms, big bows, good food, family traditions, and a sense of family pride when passing down recipes and “tips” for making a home.
Except, as prideful as my own mother is about being Southern (though, I admit, she interchanges “Southern” with “blissfully conservative as fuck” rather seamlessly), she was NOT about any of the above. Monograms are stupid. Big bows hide a girl’s face. Good food? Food isn’t meant to be GOOD. Family traditions? Unless you’re speaking of blackmail and undying grudges that follow you far past the grave, we didn’t have any. A sense of family pride when passing down recipes and tips? Food isn’t meant to be enjoyed and children are meant to spring from the womb knowing know to clean, cook, and launder appropriately, and if you didn’t, well, there’s something not right with you.
Susan’s idea of a meal was hamburger helper (5x a week), a flat cookie sheet of fries and another of hamburger patties thrown in the oven and baked till it resembled jerky, ramen noodles, the occasional chicken patty, again, put on a cookie sheet and baked until resembling a dog’s chew toy. Desserts? Those were for skinny people, and skinny people, according to Susan, probably had a drug problem to keep them skinny so they didn’t eat anyway. Breakfast? A waste of time, and all that will make you fat anyway. Lunch? Why do you want to spoil your supper? Cokes, Koolaid, Sweet Tea, those were reserved for if Susan was in a good mood, or perhaps wanted to gloat at you for a few hours about how you were fat and your choice of beverage was making you fatter. And speaking of which, Cokes were never really COKES. No, name brand cokes were for Susan and Susan only, us lesser beings, aka the children, her husband, guests, were to drink the box that proclaimed they were “Colas” but tasted as if someone had opened a shook up coke in a lake, let it fizz over for a moment, then bottled the lake water and labeled it “Cola”.
And speaking of sweet tea, well, if it wasn’t sweet enough you would forever be the one “not fit to make tea” and if it was sweet enough, you were now the one responsible for everyone in the house potentially becoming fat and having diabetes when they get old. It was a big job.
If you dared do a household chore “incorrectly”, you’d hear her boom across the house “Who taught you how to sweep/mom/dust/herd cats?” And when you explained, exactly no one, looking bewildered at Susan as she was supposed to be the maternal figure of the household, she’d mock you. “It’s just common sense! You have no common sense! You better hold onto that book smart for as long as you can because you didn’t get any of your mama’s common damn sense!”
Which brings us back to 2020. I’m still Southern. I live in the North, though, and haven’t lived in the South in almost 3 years. I have recipes. I even have my own recipes, which have been born from a combination of other recipes that I tweaked until I found something that suited my family. My daughters, though young, help me in the kitchen and have gotten lessons on the different sorts of flours and which is better for the perfect cobbler and which is best for coating chicken to fry. I’ve debated on starting a small book of my own recipes to put away for my girls and son as they age, but often second guess myself because of the voice of Susan in my head, proclaiming me stupid and setting them up to be obese and loveless.
Breaking the cycle of a narcissistic mother is hard. I’ll feel wonderful about myself and the house and the kids, and then I’ll glance around and here Susan nitpicking. There is no middle ground, either Susan’s voice is bitching about the house not being clean enough, the laundry not being done, the cooking not extravagant enough (because after all, I don’t work like SHE did), or it’s ridiculing me for being a step ford wife, relishing the art of baking bread or hanging up sheets at the perfect time of day so they come down from the clothesline smelling of sunshine.
It’s been almost 5 years now of no contact, and I still can’t shake the criticisms and mocking. Does it get better? Will it ever? I suppose time will tell.
