Mama Palooza

Gf's mother was here this weekend, helping gf disassemble her bedroom and pack the necessary things to bring to my apartment where she will live while we renovate her place and turn it into our place.

Mama GF is a lot like gf only more so. She is passionate, loving and generous. She is also mercurial, irascible and hypoglycemic. Gf is the favorite daughter of three.
Spending the weekend with them has been... enlightening. Mama GF loves me, and I love her, which is good. Because I have seen how she treats her sons-in-law whom she is not terribly fond of. And I have heard the stories about gf's ex, who she was with for eight years. GF Mama's favorite utterances in dealing with the partners of her progeny are:

1. (to the partner) "Why so 'noying?"
2. (to the room in general) "Kwwgckht!" (The phlegm-clearing Korean throat rasp of disgust.)
3. (to the daughter who brought the poor sot) "He such a idiot."

So I count my blessings to be loved by one so loathe to be pleased. The flipside, though, is the changing dynamic, or rather, the emotional fallout from it. There was a comfort in the old way: everyone was in their rightful spots in the hierarchy: 1. Mommy, 2. daughters and Daddy. Partners were the debased others relegated to performing functions and being tolerated at best. The mommy-daughter dyads were inviolate.

Enter me. I have upset the balance-- not by climbing the hierarchy (I would not presume)-- but because gf obviously loves me and I her... and we are happy. I love Mama GF and she me, and she is happy because gf is happy, because I make gf happy. But if *I* make gf happy, where does that leave her? If gf is happy with me, maybe gf doesn't love *her* as much (love, as everyone knows, is a zero-sum quantity). So GF Mama is happy because gf loves me and I love her and I make gf happy, which means gf doesn't need Mama GF to make her happy which means gf doesn't love Mama GF any more which makes Mama GF very unhappy.

This, Mama GF expressed to gf, crying: "I just jealous."

I have learned to understand these paradoxical family dynamics, but navigating them is another thing altogether.

So Saturday gf, Mama GF and I cleaned and packed and ferried boxes up and down the stairs until Mama GF hit the proverbial wall with a resounding thud, and gf and I declared it to be quitting time, a bit too late to fend off the impending crash. Mama GF descended into a funk, criticizing everything we were doing, "Why save this junk? Just throw out!" Gf responded with stony resentment. I, realizing there was no way to placate one without offending the other, retreated to menial tasks in a separate room until gf and I escaped to buy ingredients for dinner. (Linguine with fresh clam sauce, garlic bread.)

Making dinner provided a good distraction, and allowed Mama GF to focus on my strange habits in the kitchen as gf and I chopped parsley, scrubbed cockles and minced garlic("I never see no one do like this! Kwwppth! Too much work. You make pasta, put sauce-- done! Why so much work?")

But shortly after dinner, Mamaa GF returned to her funk and went straight to bed-- my bed, I should say, as gf & Mama GF shared my bed while I was relegated to the day bed in the living room, with my three cats and two dogs, plus an extra dog, Sophie, the 100+ lb. dane/lab mix who belongs to my ex's ex, but who I care for in times of trouble.*

I don't mind being cast out when Mama GF is around-- it is certainly preferrable to what happened when I stayed at Mama GF's house with gf-- then Mama GF climbed into bed WITH us, squeezing gf between her and me, and grabbed gf's arm and said, "Come to me, not her!"

Ahh, family. For my little WASPy heart it is unfathomable, these displays of raw emotion, but there is something refreshingly honest about it. After gf and I have been together for nearly a year, I know I have my father's approval. How? Because he sent me a one-line e-mail with a link to an article he thought "might be of interest to you and [gf]." In his having sent that email, I was able to discern that 1) he was thinking of gf and me as a couple; 2) he was fond enough of gf to mention her by name; and 3) he thought about her interests unprompted, meaning that she now occupies a piece of his stony little heart. This is the level at which I am used to interacting emotionally, whole novels in a comma or an ellipse.

In that vein: Hmm...

*When Sophie's mom broke up with her partner, Sophie stayed with me for 6 months. Now Sophie is sick with some kind of idiopathic pernicious anemia, and after the idiot vets in Queens couldn't figure out what was going on with her, I insisted she come with me, so that gf and her supergenius colleagues could have a go at her. She is still sick, and the disease is getting more complicated, but she is happy and being well taken care of. Hopefully her illness will be figured out soon and she will start getting better. Poor gf takes it personally, like it's her fault Sophie is sick. They both break my heart sometimes.