Call Mom Maybe
blog.twitter.com
blog.twitter.com
This is the best advice you will ever get here or anywhere else. So do it.
I called my mother almost every day for 30 years. It I missed, she was sure to remind me. No matter what else happened, it was pretty much the highlight of both of our days.
We talk about a million different metrics to measure just about everything here, but I just can't get pass HowYouTreatYouMother as the #1 binary metric of you.
More about my mother here: http://edweissman.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/betty-weissman-19...
Please call your mother for those of us who no longer can.
That's rather presumptuous.
> Please call your mother for those of us who no longer can.
What do my family contact habits have to do with people whom I've never met?
I at least knew my mother. She would take me to bars with her, or leave me with her sister while she went out (but she usually made sure to drunkenly wake me up when she got back to tell me again and again how much she loooooorved me).
Eventually she left me and my siblings and fled to Holland, where she promptly stopped paying child support and started helping to raise the other guy's children instead. Occasionally I would get cards. Even less often I would get phone calls full of guilt and awkwardness.
She's actually on my FB now, but I'm not calling her.
It gets better though, my dad later remarried to someone who means well but didn't exactly contribute to a loving upbringing... but at least she stuck around. But how does Happy "Stepmother's" Day fall into this weekend?
And every single year I get to go through this dilemma anew. Thanks, Hallmark!
So I suppose the point is that for those who do have the doting, loving mother, by all means don't skip out on making that phone call. But not all of us are going to be in that situation, so Ed's advice isn't going to apply to all of us.
He left the family and kept to himself, but that didn't stop my grandmother from visiting him every week. Bringing food and making sure he was doing OK.
To this day, I have never once heard her speak a bad word about the man. In fact, she wasn't even the person who told me this story.
I don't know if he paid "child support" or any form of it, but I would assume not as he was constantly penniless.
He couldn't help being a poor drunk, but it was nothing to punish him over is how my grandmother saw the situation.
Sometimes forgiveness and acceptance is the best medicine.
Sometimes it's not. I don't wish ill of my mother even at this point, hopefully she's happy over in Holland with her new life. And I would certainly never deign to tell your grandmother what she should do, I'm assuming she maintained contact because she had good reasons to.
But I have kids of my own to think about, a wife of my own, and a very short life of my own to live, so I'm not going to waste a minute of it worrying about someone who could not reciprocate in kind. I stress myself enough worrying about the people who do care for me.
If my kids still respect me when they grow up I want it to be because I demonstrated a reason to earn their respect, not because I guilt-tripped them into feeling they have to live up to some familial bond which society imposes upon them.
Edit: I did end up calling my stepmother earlier today as well. Pays to stay involved, I guess.
Mother's day is almost over now, thank goodness!
Anger? This is news to me.
I think you may be reading a lot more into my two lines than are actually there.
> I understand these subjects can stir powerful emotions, and I'm sure you have a valuable perspective to share on the matter - it's hard to tell, though, from such a curt and seemingly confrontational comment.
My own emotions regarding the matter are anything but powerful - which explains my resultant near-total apathy about it quite plainly.
Confrontational it was, though. I'm rather tired of people reciting platitudes as if close personal bonds to one's immediate family are universally beneficial. In many cases, it's far more destructive than helpful, yet people insist.
Society should endeavor to reject mindless duckspeak when possible.
To be clear, it's nothing to do with my own family circumstances, I just think it's incredibly rude to assume that some one-size-fits-all attitude is something to be espoused to random strangers as if you could possibly know better than them how to interface with their own family— A simple case of inappropriate presumption.
I'm rather tired of people reciting platitudes...
I just think it's incredibly rude...
All evidence to the contrary.
It seems to me that while we have deconstructed certain normative ideas (e.g. that everyone should be heterosexual), there is no general interested in pursuing a truly liberal agenda where people define for themselves who they are and how they want to live, rather than live by arbitrary rules.
What is happening is that the old rules are now being replaced by new rules. And people who break these rules are no longer called degenerates, they are called autists.
If so, why not do this on your birthday, which seems like it would be a wildly more appropriate date? :P
And of course you don't "need" to, the sun will still rise the day after if you don't, but certain things matter.
What matters even more is showing your appreciation outside of one designated day a year, or a shiny piece of carbon.
WTF? We're talking about a PHONE CALL vs a tweet for your mom not spending $20K. If you can't spare five minutes, don't bother with a tweet (unless you're in Iraq, the South Pole etc.)
It seems the whole world but us celebrates Mother's day in March.
Fun fact: while most of the world celebrates Mother's Day, very few countries have Father's Day. At least we can do something right :)
Also I still don't care much for twitter.