Mom Needs a Tortoise

Mother & Daughter Communication

TODAY updated 5/9/2006 http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/12689633/


As part of the “Today” show’s special series “Listen to Me, I’m Your Mother!,” we’re taking a look at what makes mother and daughter relationships so unique and yet so complicated. Deborah Tannen, author of “You're Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation,” was invited on the show to discuss how mothers and daughters communicate with each other and how misunderstandings can occur. In her book, Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, writes that mothers and daughters speak the same language, but have different expectations. Here's an excerpt:

Chapter 1
Can We Talk?
Mothers and Daughters in Conversation
My daughters can turn my day black in a millisecond,” says a woman whose two daughters are in their thirties.

Another woman tells me, “Sometimes I’ll be talking on the phone to my mom, and everything’s going fine, then all of a sudden she’ll say something that makes me so mad, I just hang up. Later I can’t believe I did that. I would never hang up on anyone else.”

But I also hear comments like these: “No one supports me and makes me feel good like my mother. She’s always on my side.” And from the mother of a grown daughter: “I feel very lucky and close with my daughter, and particularly since I didn’t have a close relationship with my mother, it’s very validating for me and healing.”

Mothers and daughters find in each other the source of great comfort but also of great pain. We talk to each other in better and worse ways than we talk to anyone else. And these extremes can coexist within the same daughter-mother pairs. Two sisters were in an elevator in the hospital where their mother was nearing the end of her life. “How will you feel when she’s gone?” one asked. Her sister replied, “One part of me feels, How will I survive? The other part feels, Ding-dong, the witch is dead.”

The part of a daughter that feels “How will I survive?” reflects passionate connection: Wanting to talk to your mother can be a visceral, almost physical longing, whether she lives next door, in a distant state, in another country — or if she is no longer living on this earth. But the part that sees your mother as a wicked witch — a malevolent woman with magical power — reflects the way your anger can flare when a rejection, a disapproving word, or the sense that she’s still treating you like a child causes visceral pain. American popular culture, like individuals in daily life, tends to either romanticize or demonize mothers. We ricochet between “Everything I ever accomplished I owe to my mother” and “Every problem I have in my life is my mother’s fault.” Both convictions come laden with powerful emotions. I was amazed by how many women, in the midst of e-mails telling me about their mothers, wrote, “I am crying as I write this.”

Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown daughters, mixed with the sense of responsibility for their well-being, can be overwhelming, matched only by the hurt they feel when their attempts to help or just stay connected are rebuffed or even excoriated as criticism or devilish interference. And the fact that these pushes and pulls continue after their daughters are grown is itself a surprise, and not a pleasant one. A woman in her sixties expressed this: “I always assumed that once my daughter became an adult, the problems would be over,” she said. “We’d be friends; we’d just enjoy each other. But you find yourself getting older, things start to hurt, and on top of that, there are all these complications with your daughter. It’s a big disappointment.”

Small Spark, Big Flare-up
Especially disappointing — and puzzling — is that hurt feelings and even arguments can be sparked by the smallest, seemingly insignificant remarks. Here’s an example that comes from a student in one of my classes named Kathryn Ann Harrison.

“Are you going to quarter those tomatoes?” Kathryn heard her mother’s voice as she was preparing a salad. Kathryn stiffened, and her pulse quickened. “Well, I was,” she answered. Her mother responded, “Oh, okay,” but the tone of her voice and the look on her face prompted Kathryn to ask, “Is that wrong?”

“No, no,” her mother replied. “It’s just that personally, I would slice them.”

Kathryn’s response was terse: “Fine.” But as she cut the tomatoes — in slices — she thought, Can’t I do anything without my mother letting me know she thinks I should do it some other way?

I am willing to wager that Kathryn’s mother thought she had asked a question about cutting a tomato. What could be more trivial than that? But her daughter bristled because she heard the implication “You don’t know what you’re doing. I know better.”

When daughters react with annoyance or even anger at the smallest, seemingly innocent remarks, mothers get the feeling that talking to their daughters can be like walking on eggshells: they have to watch every word.

A mother’s questions and comments which seem to imply that a daughter should do things another way can spark disproportionate responses because they bring into focus one of the central conundrums of mother-daughter relationships: the double meaning of connection and control. Many mothers and daughters are as close as any two people can be, but closeness always carries with it the need, indeed the desire, to consider how your actions will affect the other person, and this can make you feel that you are no longer in control of your own life. Any word or action intended in the spirit of connection can be interpreted as a sign that the other person is trying to control you. This double meaning was crystallized in a comment that one woman made: “My daughter used to call me every day,” she said. “I loved it. But then she stopped. I understand. She got married, she’s busy, she felt she had to loosen the bonds. I understand, but I still miss those calls.” In the phrase “loosen the bonds” lies the double meaning of connection and control. The word “bonds” evokes the connection of “a close bond” but also the control of “bondage”: being tied up, not free.

There is yet another reason that a small comment or suggestion can grate: It can come across as a vote of no confidence. This is annoying coming from anyone, but it’s especially hurtful when it comes from the person whose opinion counts most — your mother. Unaccountable as this may seem to mothers, the smallest remark can bring into focus the biggest question that hovers over nearly all conversations between mothers and daughters: Do you see me for who I am? And is who I am okay? When mothers’ comments to daughters (or, for that matter, daughters’ comments to mothers) seem to answer that question in the affirmative, it’s deeply reassuring: all’s right with the world. But when their words seem to imply that the answer is No, there’s something wrong with what you’re doing, then daughters (and, later in life, mothers) can feel the ground on which they stand begin to tremble: They start to doubt whether how they do things, and therefore who they are, really is okay.

You’re Not Going to Wear That, Are You?
Loraine was spending a week visiting her mother, who lived in a senior living complex. One evening they were about to go down to dinner in the dining room. As Loraine headed for the door, her mother hesitated. Scanning her daughter from head to toe, she asked, “You’re not going to wear that, are you?”

“Why not?” Loraine asked, her blood pressure rising. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, people tend to dress nicely for dinner here, that’s all,” her mother explained, further offending her daughter by implying that she was not dressed nicely.

Her mother’s negative questions always rubbed Loraine the wrong way, because they so obviously weren’t questions at all. “Why do you always disapprove of my clothes?” she asked.

Now her mother got that hurt look which implied it was Loraine who was being a cad. “I don’t disapprove,” she protested. “I just thought you might want to wear something else.”

A way to understand the difference between what Loraine heard and what her mother said she meant is the distinction between message and metamessage. When she said “I don’t disapprove,” Loraine’s mother was referring to the message: the literal meaning of the words she spoke. The disapproval Loraine heard was the metamessage — that is, the implications of her mother’s words. Everything we say has meaning on these two levels. The message is the meaning that resides in the dictionary definitions of words. Everyone usually agrees on this. But people frequently differ on how to interpret the words, because interpretations depend on metamessages — the meaning gleaned from how something is said, or from the fact that it is said at all. Emotional responses are often triggered by metamessages.

When Loraine’s mother said “I don’t disapprove,” she was doing what I call “crying literal meaning”: She could take cover in the message and claim responsibility only for the literal meaning of her words. When someone cries literal meaning, it is hard to resolve disputes, because you end up talking about the meaning of the message when it was the meaning of the metamessage that got your goat. It’s not that some utterances have metamessages, or hidden meanings, while others don’t. Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious statement or a joke? Does it show annoyance or goodwill? Most of the time, metamessages are communicated and interpreted without notice because, as far as anyone can tell, the speaker and the hearer agree on their meaning. It’s only when the metamessage the speaker intends — or acknowledges — doesn’t match the one the hearer perceives that we notice and pay attention to them.

In interpreting her mother’s question as a sign of disapproval, Loraine was also drawing on past conversations. She couldn’t count the times her mother had commented, on this visit and on all the previous ones, “You’re wearing that?” And therein lies another reason that anything said between mothers and daughters can either warm our hearts or raise our hackles: Their conversations have a long history, going back literally to the start of the daughter’s life. So anything either one says at a given moment takes meaning not only from the words spoken at that moment but from all the conversations they have had in the past. This works in both positive and negative ways. We come to expect certain kinds of comments from each other, and are primed to interpret what we hear in that familiar spirit.

Even a gift, a gesture whose message is clearly for connection, can carry a metamessage of criticism in the context of conversations that took place in the past. If a daughter gives her artist mother a gift certificate to an upscale clothing store, it may be resented if her daughter has told her again and again, “You’re too old to keep dressing like a hippie, Mom.” And criticism may be the impression if a mother who has made clear she can’t stand her daughter’s messy kitchen gives her as a gift an expensive organizer for kitchen utensils. The gift giver may be incensed that her generosity has been underappreciated, but the lack of gratitude has less to do with the message of the gift than with the metamessage it implies, which came from past conversations.

The long history of conversations that family members share contributes not only to how listeners interpret words but also to how speakers choose them. One woman I talked to put it this way: “Words are like touch. They can caress or they can scratch. When I talk to my children, my words often end up scratching. I don’t want to use words that way, but I can’t help it. I know their sensitivities, so I know what will have an effect on them. And if I’m feeling hurt by something they said or did, I say things that I know will scratch. It happens somewhere in a zone between instinct and intention.” This observation articulates the power of language to convey meanings that are not found in the literal definitions of words. It highlights how we use past conversations as a resource for meaning in present ones. At the same time, it describes the distinction between message and metamessage, a distinction that will be important in all the conversations examined in this book.

Who Cares?
While talking casually to her husband, Joanna absentmindedly tugs at a hangnail until the skin tears and a tiny droplet of blood appears. Unthinking, she holds it out before her husband’s eyes. “Put on a Band-Aid,” he says flatly. Her husband’s non-reaction makes Joanna wonder why she showed him so insignificant an injury. And then she realizes: She developed the habit of displaying her wounds, no matter how small, to her mother. Had she shown the ever so slightly broken skin to her, her mother would have reached out, taken Joanna’s finger in her hand, and examined it with a soothing grimace. Joanna was looking for that glance of sympathy, that fleeting reminder that someone else shares her universe. Who but her mother would regard so small an injury as worthy of attention? No one — because her mother would be responding not to the wound but to Joanna’s gesture in showing it to her. It isn’t only, isn’t really, concern for the torn hangnail that her mother shares but a subtle language of connection: The tiny drop of blood is an excuse for Joanna to remind her mother “I’m here” and for her mother to reassure her daughter “I care.”

Many women develop the habit of telling their mothers about minor misfortunes because they treasure the metamessage of caring they know they will hear in response, though, like Joanna, they may not notice until they get a different response from someone else. This also happened to a student in one of my classes, Carrie, when she was sick with the flu and called home. Carrie usually talked to her mother when she called, but this time her mother was out of the country, so she spoke to her father instead. This is how Carrie recounted the conversation in a class assignment:

Carrie: Hey, Daddy. I’m sick with the flu. It’s absolutely awful.

Dad: Well, take some medicine.

Carrie: I already did, but I still feel terrible.

Dad: Well then, go to the doctor.

Carrie: But everyone else at school is sick too. I couldn’t get an appointment for today.

Dad: Well, then, I’m sorry. I can’t help you there.

In commenting on this conversation, Carrie explained that she knows perfectly well to take medicine and go to the doctor when she’s sick. What she had been looking for when she called home was a metamessage of caring. In her words: “I am used to talking to my mother and having her fuss and worry over the smallest of my problems.” In contrast to her mother’s characteristic response, her father’s pragmatic approach came across as indifference and left her feeling dissatisfied, even slightly hurt.

Excerpted from "You're Wearing That?" by Deborah Tannen. Copyright © 2006 by Deborah Tannen. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Live, Crawfish, Live!

(Reuters) - Instead of plunging headfirst to their death in a pot of boiling water, 534 live lobsters escaped the dinner plate and belly flopped to freedom into the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

A group of Tibetan Buddhists flanked the sides of a whale-watching boat at dusk on Wednesday, sprayed the lobsters with blessed water, clipped the bands binding their dangerous claws and released them one by one into the deep water below.

The 30 Buddhists of all ages trekked to this northern Massachusetts fishing hub to buy 600 pounds of lobster from a seafood wholesaler and save the critters from imminent death.

The lobster liberation was scheduled for August 3, which is Wheel Turning Day on this year's Tibetan lunar calendar, the anniversary of the first sermon Buddha taught. On this holiday, the merit for positive actions is multiplied many times.

"Even if they get captured again, they've had a longer life," said Wendy Cook, former director at the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Medford, north of Boston.

Buddhists from the center typically liberate masses of the expensive seafood a couple times each year.

Cook, a yoga instructor, led a ceremony that included prayers, mantras and walking boxes of the lobsters in a circle around blessed objects. This develops a karmic connection for the animals' future lifetimes and help ease future suffering, she said.

Monk Geshe Tenley, Kurukulla Center's resident teacher, who was wearing a saffron robe, released the first lobster.

In India, Geshe Tenley said, cows, sheep and even goats are purchased and saved from slaughter. But here in New England, saving the lobsters and extending their lives -- even if just for an hour -- is most practical and a real way the group can make a difference in the lobsters' existence and their own.

"It's rethinking the way you normally see these creatures," said Victoria Fan, a graduate student who participated in the ceremony steps away from a sign for $15.99 lobster dinners.

"You're supposed to view them equally. Their happiness is as important as your happiness, their suffering is as important as your suffering," Fan said.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jerry Norton)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/05/us-lobsters-buddhists-odd-idUSTRE7743ZG20110805

Prrrrrrrr

Where Nobody Can Hear You Scream

I have yet again ran into an obstacle. Never in my working history have I had any problems with my paychecks. My job is shorting hours.
We are dealing with technology. It is not perfect because it is made by humans. But, NO, the payroll system is PERFECT!! Fuckers. They always say, "We overpaid you, our system recognizes when there is an error." We are right, you are wrong. I have been shorted hours. I am taking screen shots and sending it to the department of labor. Now, let's see what excuse they come up with.
I am searching for new employment while I still can. Ultimately, I will have to rent out another room. No jobs pay more than $10.50 per hour. Thank-you DirecTV for screwing up my life. I hope the millions of customers you have finally realize that you are high maintenance and find that programming online is better.
I am stuck on my project for school. My final project is to find a communication barrier and solve it. Gee, I have a large supply of people I do not communicate with. I thought my communication barrier with mother would be a good idea. Many mothers and daughters have a communication barrier. I think it would be a difficult assignment. I do not visit much. I think the last time I saw mom, I was showing poor communication skills. One barrier so far is technology.
It could be who I know has a communication barrier. I spoke too much about my father. Men communicate differently than women, men communicate differently than women.
I think my problem is that I speak about other people. I have not really focused on myself and how to overcome my own barrier. I am shy and do not communicate because of negative experience. I use technology to express myself. I do not think that I would be able to do a final assignment about a communication barrier I have with myself. Can I?
I spent time with mom for my birthday. We saw the latest Harry Potter, it was bad ass. We went to an excellent Thai restaurant. On my birthday, I worked. I came to work to find confetti, balloons, and a cupcake. Then, I spent the rest of the day alone. Dad called, he didn't say happy birthday. He just called to let me know when he was coming over. Sheesh. We had a pretty good BBQ. I had to buy a new one because some asshole broke the other one.
I feel alone. I gave up on POF, my current boyfriend already has a woman in his life. All I want to be is negative. Monster person who is not a good friend is pregnant. All I want to do is wish her ill.
I wish I had time and money to get out of the house. I would take the dogs for a walk but I do not feel like breaking up a dog fight. I'm too far away from people.

Getting Closer

Unfortunately, I have to be working.

Harassment

The neighbors across the street are breeding like rabbits. They have all of these boys jumping everywhere. They go on my yard to break things.
Last week I told them to get off my yard. They were tearing up my cherry tree. I have come home to a shattered ash tray on my side walk. The day before yesterday, I was watering my yard.
The boy next door told me that the kids were in my yard banging my welcome sign on my mail box. I put on my shoes and walk across the street. I knock on the door and this trashy, pregnant woman answers.
"The boys here, they need to stay off my yard. It is bad enough I have to clean up after all of these cats and clean up the mess my ex left, I have to clean up after your boys. If they do not stay off my yard I will call the cops." I told her.
She gets huffy and puffy, "You could have asked me politely. You do not have to be threatening me."
"Your boys were slamming my sign on my mail box today.
Snotty bitch, "Whatever, they have been at the lake all day today." She slams the door.
Really?? I own my house, they rent theirs. I have every right to tell the cunt to keep her boys off my yard. They have no right to be on my yard making a mess out of it. If they need to grab a lost ball, I am fine if they get it. I am not fine if they want to come and ruin my house. She wants to keep popping kids out and not take care of them? They are playing on every body's yard!
I have a no trespassing sign in my front yard. I call the cops about the inbreeds playing in my yard. They say that I have to have a cop talk to them in order to press charges on them in the future. Fine, I want that. I have a cop come over. I tell them of the hardship these people (animals) are causing. The cop went over to talk to them.
I was working on class last night. I hear something get shattered. The dogs go crazy. I run outside and looked around the yard. I do not see anyone. I go to the car and it looks fine. I go back in and turn on the porch light.
I go outside this morning to move my sprinkler. There is glass all over my steps. Someone had broke my light. Again, I have to waste my time calling the cops. This time, I am also asking people for the phone number for the owner of the house.
The cop cannot do anything because nobody witnessed anything. At least I will have a cop talking to them to make them aware that I am serious. As soon as I have the homeowners number, I will call him about the trash in his house. Hopefully, I can get them evicted.
It reminds me of when I was living in Monte Vista. There was a fat bitch with a ton of children. I was just walking down the road and she starts yelling at me, "What did you call me?!" People call other neighbors for no reason in a trailer court. If one mother is calling another just to have a strangers baby smacked around, I would call it third party child abuse.