Can We Ever Really Please Our Mothers?

Can you ever please your mother? This is the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I told my mother last week that I was planning to elope. (Yes, I was proposed to and I said yes!) My mother asked me if my fiance and I had talked about wedding plans and I mentioned that we’d probably elope. I’ve always wanted a very small beach wedding and I wanted it only to include my fiance, our children and myself. I could tell by my mother’s, ”Aw, Becky! Really?” that I had disappointed her with these plans.

Don’t get me wrong: I could see why she would want to be at her only daughter’s wedding. But I’m also 37 years old and I figured that by now, I could do what I want without any guilt. Oh, so wrong I was. For two days after I told my mother of my elopement plans, I felt awful, and that I had disappointed her. So, now, my fiance’s parents and my parents are invited to our beach wedding.

I gave in, because I couldn’t live with the thought of disappointing her. I asked some other friends, who are also around my age, if they ever feel like they still disappoint their mothers. ”Um, every day!” responded one 38-year-old friend from New York. ”My mother was really disappointed that I didn’t name one of my sons after her father,” she told me, as an example.

Another friend, who recently lost her job, was terrified to tell her mother for fear of disappointing her even though it had nothing to do with her performance and everything to do with the company going under. I asked yet another friend if she ever feels like she pleases her mother and she answered, ”Is that possible? Aside from answering her calls 10 times a day?”

I always thought that maybe there was a statute of limitations on being a child I don’t know, like age 25? when you could finally do whatever you want in life, without feeling guilty that you are disappointing your parents. And to make things even more difficult, at the same time we’re trying not to disappoint our mothers, we’re trying to please them, too. For example, one of my friends bought a house on her own at age 28 after working very hard to save money to do just that. ”It was so I could please my mother and show her I could do it,” she told me.

I never want to disappoint my mother. In fact, sometimes it seems like everything I do, like raising my daughter to be polite and kind and calling her all the time or even just going over for dinner once a week, is to please my mother. A few weeks ago, I was in such a rotten mood, and I had plans to go to my parents’ for dinner. I knew I wouldn’t be good company, so I called them to bail. It totally backfired, on my part, because for the entire evening I felt so awful that I had disappointed her, that it would have been easier on my mental state to just to go over and be there in a bad mood.

I can also see how ”pleasing your mother” starts very young. My daughter, for instance, has started saying, ”Don’t be mad at me,” before saying things like, ”but can you turn down the television?” Or, ”Don’t be mad at me, promise you won’t be mad at me?” And I’ll say, ”I promise I won’t be mad at you,” and then she’ll say something totally out of the blue, like, ”But I didn’t finish that picture I started for you.” The thing is, I’ve never (or try never) to act like she’s disappointed me, because she never really does.

Is this a female thing, I wonder. (Please don’t call me sexist!) But I don’t see any of my three brothers worrying about what my mother thinks. If they don’t want to come for dinner, then they just say they are busy. If they don’t return my mother’s phone calls, well, they just don’t. Meanwhile, I have to return my mother’s sometimes five phone calls a day, or else I do feel like I’m disappointing her. Often, when I’m on television, or on the radio, or write a story in a magazine, I completely forget to tell my mother. She’ll hear it from friends of theirs. And then I hear, ”Why didn’t you tell me?” And I have no excuse except to say, ”I forgot!” And then I feel like I’ve you’ve got it disappointed my mother.

Back to my first point, about the elopement, I’ve been really thinking hard about my daughter one day announcing to me that she’s planning to elope. Would I be disappointed? I really don’t think so, if that’s what she wants. But then again, I’ve only been a mother for eight years. Maybe it takes longer to get the whole ”You’ve disappointed me” schtick to perfection.

(Photo: iStockphoto)