The Sound of Silence
When Your Politically Possessed Mother Stops Talking to You
On July 30th at 4:29am, a magnitude 4.2 earthquake roused me right out of my REM cycle. I remained in situ as I waited to see if this seismic interloper would evolve into something that might require me to get out of bed and take cover in the doorway. Thankfully, the shaking tapered off and I managed to fall back to sleep for another hour.
According to the CalTech website, the quake was centered in Pacoima, approximately 9 miles north of where I reside in Burbank. I couldn’t help recalling how terrified my mother was after the 6.7 Northridge quake in 1994 — not that this little tremor was even remotely near that magnitude — but given that Pacoima is only about 3 miles from where my 81 year-old mother lives in Sylmar, I figured she probably experienced it more intensely, so I made a mental note to check in with her later.
Upon embarking on my daily walk that afternoon — a habit I’d picked up during California’s first stay-at-home order — I phoned my mom. As I suspected, the quake had indeed rattled her nerves a bit, otherwise, she was fine. We then engaged in some casual catch-up chit chat being that it’d been a few weeks since last we spoke. It was all good until she started talking politics. Ugh. The last thing I wanted to do was talk politics with my mother.
Like a lot of folks, I was dealing with pandemic fatigue. On my worst days, I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Sometimes it took everything I had in me not to scream at people who eschewed wearing masks, including some of my friends, many of whom were not taking Covid seriously. Not only that, the political landscape had grown exponentially more intolerable. Whenever I saw Trump’s tweets or heard sound bites from one of his gazillion super spreader rallies, constantly churning disinformation and lies, I felt sick to my stomach. The thought of another four years of Trump was utterly unbearable.
Being that my mother basically subsists on a steady diet of coffee and ultra conservative cable news and alt-right talk radio, she’s always locked and loaded with her conservative political agenda, raring to go, just champing at the bit for an opportunity, any opportunity to have at it, any time, any place with anyone; whether it’s at the doughnut shop where she plays her lottos or her granddaughter’s sweet sixteen birthday party.
In a word, my mother is intense.
It’d be one thing if we could have a civilized conversation; a healthy, robust dialogue, or even a willingness to respectfully agree to disagree, no love lost. I’m actually quite capable of such things. My mother, however, is not.
So, as my mother continued her political discourse, I decided to employ a tactic I learned some years ago in therapy, the no response-response. This is where you don’t engage, you just allow the other person to blather on while you completely zone out. Ideally, when they realize they’re not getting what they want from you — which is typically an emotional payoff of some kind elicited from pushing your buttons until you lose all sense of reason and composure — they move onto other topics, or they get super frustrated and double down. It’s about 50/50.
For what seemed like forever, I “listened” as my mother gushed about how Donald Trump is the greatest president we’ve ever had. I clenched my teeth as she lambasted Biden and “that bitch Nancy Pelosi” and blamed the no-good Democrats for everything that “is wrong with our country today.” Now, the whole time I’m talking myself through it: Just let her rant. It’s okay. She’ll tire herself out eventually.
To be clear, pulling off the no response-response is no easy feat as it requires infinite patience and I could feel mine beginning to wane. Not to mention, my mother occasionally misinterprets my no response-response neutrality as apathy, which royally pisses her off to no end. Alas. This was one of those occasions.
How can you be so stupid?
Ah. There it is.
Suffice it to say, things got a bit heated after that. I pushed back some. I got a few little digs in, not gonna lie. I’m not proud of it. I did, however, manage to remain fairly calm and composed and I was mindful about not raising my voice too much, especially since my neighborhood was alive with people enjoying the sunshine and the last thing I wanted to do was walk among them screaming like a raging lunatic.
I must have pushed her buttons fairly well, though, because she completely changed course. Next thing I know she’s telling me how, apparently, while going through some old papers, she unearthed a book I’d made probably some thirty-five years ago with photos of her accompanied by these “terrible, hurtful” captions. When I mentioned I’d really like to see the book, so maybe I could better understand the context and perhaps explain why I made it in the first place, she informed me she already destroyed it and abruptly ended our conversation. “You don’t ever have to call me again.” Click.
I have to admit I was a bit flummoxed.
My relationship with my mother has been fraught for decades and not just because we fall on opposite ends of the political spectrum, although I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention politics have been a massive bone of contention ever since I ditched the GOP and voted for Dukakis in 1988. My mom actually takes my political opposition as a personal affront, as if I’m a Democrat just to spite her, and she also firmly believes my “liberal college education” corrupted my mind and set me on the path of immorality and godlessness, since for her, politics and religion are deeply intertwined.
Once Trump took office in 2016, interactions between me and my mother became even more precarious. Trump stoked her worst fears about gays and immigrants and other nefarious types of non-white people. He gave voice to all the hate and rage roiling inside of her. Finally, someone spoke her language: American. His divisive, violent rhetoric emboldened and validated her caustic speech and behavior. I spent the better part of his presidency painstakingly navigating our conversations over the phone or whenever we spent time together as best I could, keeping it light, deflecting, changing the subject, and utilizing the no response-response, anything to avoid an altercation.
Then 2020 arrives with its double whammy deadly pandemic during an election year beset with unbridled political tribalism, egregious divisiveness, Q-Anon conspiracy theories, BLM protests, and liberty rallies, while cable news and social media platforms hemorrhaged misinformation and disinformation. It was overwhelming to say the least, and virtually impossible to avoid politics altogether, so any time spoke with my mom, I made a concerted effort to keep our conversations short and sweet. It’s my bad that I let that last conversation get out of hand.
It’s been roughly seven months since my mother and I have spoken, the longest we have ever gone without talking. I’ve thought about calling her several times, regardless of her having hung up on me, and despite knowing — per my brother — that she doesn’t plan on talking to me until I apologize for something I (allegedly) said that was so offensive she refused to repeat it even to him.
The thing is, as the political and cultural landscape has grown increasingly more volatile since Trump lost the election, there hasn’t been a reasonably safe time to call without risking further discord.
Believe me, I’m not not calling her because I’m butt-hurt upset or because I’m stubbornly digging in my heels and waiting for her to call me first. We’re talking self-preservation here. Like so many of us, my mental and emotional health and well-being was seriously challenged last year and I’m still recovering and I simply lack the wherewithal to endure her blistering excoriations, attacks on my character, projections, and general mind fuckery.
I fully recognize that my mother is in her early 80’s and life is short and everything and I’m all about letting bygones be bygones, nevertheless. I’m doing what’s best for me right now.
I’m taking refuge in the sound of peaceful silence.
