Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

OR... Lies my mother told me....

Before I begin, I want to stress that I'm not trying to paint my mother as a liar. My goal is to illustrate the disease process of an aging bi-polar.

We've talked about confabulation a lot on this blog. This is the tendency to fill in the missing memory items with assumptions of what the truth could be.

My siblings and I are pretty far apart in age. (I'm the menopause baby!) My older siblings have a history that I do not share. I remember when my grandmother (Mom's mom) turned 80, my sisters came to Pennsylvania to attend a luncheon in Grandma's honor. I live a couple of hours away from where Grandma lived and died, and where my brother and sisters were born and spent their formative years.

All the way to Grandma's house they pointed out landmarks and reminisced about people and places that I had never known or experienced. It struck me that our lives were completely different. Their foundation was one of family, extended family, the love of grandparents, life with cousins and aunts and uncles. This was something that I did not know.

I don't know my cousins, or even my aunts and uncles, really. Whenever we were around them, I always felt like "poor relations". Of course, that probably came as a result of the conversations my parents had in the car on the way.

Being the child of a bi-polar requires a meticulous attention to detail and a near photographic memory. The child must remember what sets off a tirade, where the keys are, phone numbers, what's in the fridge, who's coming to dinner, etc. etc. Even remembering all these things is no guarantee of peace. But it's a good hedge to the bet.

I say that to tell you that I remember my mother's history very well. I remember every job she had, from waitress to factory worker to fabric store clerk to Disney employee. I remember them well. And I remember dad's too.

My earliest memories of dad's career are of him being a mechanic of some sort with TWA. He was an airplane mechanic during the war and when the space program came along, they used airplane mechanics in the Apollo Space program. Dad's claim to fame in the space program was his run as a union shop steward.

Mom tells people that Dad was "Head of PR for NASA". And that prestigious position allowed him to "span the globe" in search of only the best titanium for her knee replacements. Total fabrication.

Family history tells that when Dad first came back from the war, he worked for Sylvania Electric as a research lab assistant. Dad's research team invented the process that allows you to see the color red on your color TV. I understand that the patent contains all the names of the people involved in this project.

When Mom's TV started making all the people look badly sunburned, she told everyone that this was the TV that my father used to single handedly invent the color red. I bought her the TV when she moved from my house to her own apartment about 10 years ago.

I went to Mom's room on Wednesday and found her wringing her hands over the Fannie May/Freddie Mac debacle. "When I owned a real estate firm, we had to deal with those crooks all the time." Folks, I can't even tie that to a thread of truth. Mom never had anything to do with real estate in my life time.

When my son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, my mom related how many autistic kids she'd worked with when she was a special needs teacher. Again, I have no idea where she got that.

Mom's always been an embellisher and it used to mortify me when she'd start spinning her yarns. Now it doesn't bother me so much. I am certain that you could hook my mother up to a polygraph, ask her questions about her new history and she'd pass with flying colors. This is now my mother's reality. Absolutely.

I wish her life had been so fulfilling and so exciting. I know that her life was a disappointment to her. She's always been one of the most self-loathing people I've ever encountered. I never understood that. My mom was funny, talented, brainy, and attractive, yet she genuinely hated herself. I think my sisters and I all struggle with that same tendancy. I know that we are all driven to do well in our lives. We all clammor for "the prize". What is "the prize"? It's our mother's approval.

Approval. Funny. Mom approves of whichever one of us is not in the room.