Mother-daughter Death Match
...erely battered, but only one emerges victorious. My mother looked up as if to signal that another round could begin. My brother, now acting as referee, informed us of the new rules, “Only speak when told and do not yell.” My mother was allowed the first move. She looked right at me, her blue eyes bloodshot and covered in smeared mascara and declared, “When you are under this roof young lady, you will follow our rules and if you don’t like it you can go elsewhere. If I want you home at 12:30, you will be home at 12:30, no exceptions. I don’t care what you do when you’re in Austin, when you are here we expect you home at a decent hour.” I said all that I could, but years of experience told me to accept defeat. She not only had the power to make my life more difficult, she had my father in her corner and conquering the two-headed dragon has proven impossible. For as long as I can remember my mother and I have been arguing over everything from my over-tweezed eyebrows to my 23 year-old boyfriend, that even after 2 years she still refuses to recognize as a serious part of my life. My mother, now 49 years old, was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She attended Catholic school until ninth-grade, where she was crowned Homecoming Queen her senior year. She’s never claimed to have been a great student but she has informed me on numerous occasions that she was nice to everyone, and that I should try harder to do the same. Her Catholic background has set her morals high and she had attempted with each child to pass her beliefs on, but has failed in this endeavor. However her failures don’t prevent her from trying to dictate even the slightest move in our lives. She has always had this desperate need for control, which I presume came as a result of having children and her desire for us not to repeat her mistakes. Forcing my brothers and me to attend to college because she didn’t have the opportunity to do so herself. She always says to me, “One day when you’re a mother Kristen, you’ll understand.” She refuses to let us make our own mistakes, and her action are driven by what she wants for us, and at times ignores what we want out of life. When we were old enough to start going out at night she worried herself to death that something would happen to us. “There are so many crazies out there; you just need to be careful,” she would say. And every night we got home, without fail, she would be waiting up in the living room in front of the TV, an old AMC movie acting merely as background music to put her to sleep. She would awaken with the closing of the back door, check the time for appropriate curfew compliance, and then go to bed. She also feels the need to always know what’s going on in our lives, wh...