Reruns

So...this summer. I had a job in the office of a summer camp; shortly prior to camp beginning we were still short teachers. My mom is (was, she hasn't been able to keep a job in years) a teacher. With a lot of thought and many misgivings, I recommended her for a position. She was rushed through the interview process, and got the job. There were things I knew she would struggle with - getting resupply orders in to me, keeping her room organized, getting along with a younger staff, etc - but I thought, with me there as a buffer, I could make it work. It was only seven weeks...how wrong could it go? She got fired at week three. That's right, my mother got fired from the position I helped her get, while I was still at the workplace (and killing it, in my position, I might add). 

What went wrong? She didn't like the curriculum. I'll give her that the curriculum was complicated, supply heavy, and maybe even - as she said ad nauseam - not age appropriate. Many of the other instructors were very stressed out the first week too, so my mother's particular degree of obnoxiousness wasn't immediately apparent. But then all the other instructors started to adapt - tweak materials, shorten intros, etc...as they were told they were allowed to do. After a few long days of unpaid overtime (they really didn't get enough time to set up) they had their classrooms in order and were able to keep on top of supplies and set-up, for the most part. My mom...just kept hollering. She bitched about the curriculum, the lack of help from the team leaders, the pay, the quality of supplies...anything else she could think of. On weekends I would go over the week's lesson plans with her and brainstorm ways to make them more manageable. She would drag her heels and complain the whole way through, and then still tell the director she just wasn't going to do certain projects. She swore that all the other instructors still felt as strongly as she did, they just didn't have the guts to keep saying it. Well, I explained to her, you can't start a revolution with nobody behind you. If all fourteen other instructors are willing to put their jobs on the line and rally behind you...go for it, make yourself heard. But in actuality nobody is willing to stand behind you, so you're just a complainer and a thorn in everyone's side. 

I begged her not to make me look bad. I reminded her that it was just for seven weeks - just put your head down, do the work, get paid, and don't come back next year. How hard is that? She climbed the ladder up to her high horse and stated that "it wasn't fair that their curriculum developers were getting overpaid to hand down not age appropriate curriculum that tormented the underpaid teachers who were tasked with implementing it." She was not going to shut her mouth until the CEO said "Oh my goodness, you are so right! Stop everything - put camp on hold - please, please, how much do I have to pay you to redesign this terrible curriculum?"...or, until she got fired. 

I was not pre-informed of her termination. It made for a) a very awkward conversation between the director and myself in which she had to inform me that she had just fired my mom (which I took "surprisingly well and so professionally" because I am all too aware of how crazy my mom really is) and b) an ugly evening at home. We started out talking about the job, and then, of course, moved on to the larger issue of the mess that her life is - literally and figuratively. She told me in no uncertain terms that she did not want my help on any front, and that she did not feel she had done anything wrong. As in, ever - this summer's employment debacle, all the past jobs she's been fired from, the state of someone else's house that she lives in for free, the state of the last house that she abandoned...she's made no bad choices, and done nothing inappropriate or irresponsible, or just plain cruel. 

She went back to sitting in her armchair all day, watching TV. When she finished watching all the prime time TV that she had not had time to watch during her three weeks of work (another thing she complained about), she started watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. All. Day. Long. 

So, I guess I give up. With the camp season over, my boyfriend and I are looking for an apartment closer to his job, and the job I will begin in September. He asked the other night if I was going to try to say anything more to her before we left. What do you say about change to a person who believes they have done nothing wrong? If admitting you have a problem is half the battle, she's sitting in her armchair, blissfully unaware that a battle rages around her. I feel like I've failed Jack, who's house and life she clutters daily, but I don't know what else I can do. 

Catch Up

My summer job begins tomorrow, and my boyfriend arrived last week (and is already working...he is awesome!) After several fights, my mom decided that I was the reason the progress on the bedroom she promised to clean before my boyfriend's arrival was going so slow. I don't know how this could have been possible, since she didn't let me help, or even touch anything. It was pretty much a HUGE waste of my time and money to come out early (by my calculations, I could say that my mother owes me a little over $3,000 - what I would have made by not coming out a month early to help, seeing as I was not allowed to help, minus what I would have paid for the extra month of rent). She explicitly asked me to be in the house as little as possible; my presence upset her and she did not want to see my face. So, I made arrangements to do just that. I started volunteering at a theater two hours away that kindly offered me housing for the three to four day stretches I was there working for them. I did projects for friends and crashed at their houses. 

The week before my boyfriend was due to arrive, my mom started reciting a list of things she would need my help with that week. "Um, mom, I'm out of town all week. You asked me to be out of the house, and I've done quite well at it." Immediate hysterics: "I obviously didn't mean the last week! You're doing this to spite me! How specific do I have to be with you! Of course I need your help in the last week! How am I supposed to do this on my own!" 

In the last weekend, days before the boyfriend's arrival, it got done...enough. There is still a large trunk, two bookshelves, and a dresser in our bedroom (all full of my mom's stuff), but the bed is clear, there is one empty dresser for us, and just enough floor space for me to put up a standing clothes rack I bought, and for us to move around (if we both don't need to get around the bed at the same time). This was accomplished by moving all of the junk from her room into the dining room, and by an infuriating game of furniture tetris, which involved a rare show of spirit from Jack when he refused to let his dresser live in the living room ("just for the summer!"...yeah, right).

So, that's where we're at now. Tempers have been relatively low, as everyone is on their best behavior around the boy, as he is a new-comer. I'm sure it'll get interesting again, real soon. 

If you don't want me to act like your mother, stop acting like a child

Last Tuesday my mom wrapped a gift. She found some tissue paper and curling ribbon, picked a flower from the yard, and got the tape and scissors out from the kitchen junk drawer and wrapped the gift on the kitchen table. I was out of town Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday - volunteering at a theater a few hours away. I came home for a whirlwind fifteen minutes on Friday before leaving again to spend Memorial Day Weekend with friends at their family cabin. When I returned home - six days later - the tissue paper, curling ribbon, and tape were all still spread across the kitchen table. The scissors had found their way back to the junk drawer. I'm sorry, but I can't write that off as a symptom of hoarding disorder; that's called being lazy. 

Two friends came to pick me up for the cabin trip. I was still throwing a few things in my bag, so I told them to come in for a minute. Kate I've known since college and she knows about my mom, but Shana is a new friend so I quickly added, as they entered, "Please excuse the state of the house. My mother is a hoarder and I'm only staying with her temporarily; I would never live like this." At the cabin I was sweeping the kitchen after a large group lunch, as I had also done after breakfast. "Damn," Shana proclaimed, "you're always cleaning, you're making everyone else look bad." Kate and Anna (who's family owns the cabin, and who I've known forever) laughed; "That's her style - don't feel like you have to keep up with her. She doesn't expect you too, and neither does anyone else." And it's true. I completely understand that I "see" mess differently than other people and I feel much more at ease putting in a quick bit of work to clean a mess than I do trying to actively ignore it. So when I'm among friends, that's what I do. This makes new friends a little nervous, but my good friends understand that I'm not playing the martyr or secretly judging others for not picking up the broom before me.

"Can I ask a question?" Shana began. "If your mother is...the way she is...how did you get to be the way you are? I mean, how did you even learn to clean at all...let alone be as clean as you are?" I have always thought of cleanliness as common sense. The kitchen table, for example, is for eating. If you need to use the table as the surface for a project, you clean up your tools an supplies afterwards, and put them in one designated place so they are easy to find the next time you need them. This makes so much sense. I don't remember having to be taught this, but I guess I learned it at school. I've read blog posts by other COH though, who would not consider themselves hoarders as well, but who struggle to understand the line between clean and dirty and how to keep on the clean side. My excessive cleanliness is most certainly a direct reaction against the way I was raised, but is my capacity for cleanliness in general genetic or was it learned - can't say.

At any rate, however, cleanliness is a lesson my mother has never learned. I find this particularly *amusing* since it was a lesson she taught, as a kindergarten teacher. She would sing songs about cleaning up as her students picked up after free play, while her supply closet was so cluttered it was deemed a fire hazard year after year, and I would come in every spring break to clean it up. How do you teach children a skill you are "incapable" of yourself?

Often in our fights my mother will yell, "You are not my mother, so stop acting like you are!" I have no desire to be my mother's "mother," but it's hard to know how else to act towards someone who is behaving like a child. Asking someone to put away supplies from a project they completed six days ago is not an adult conversation; it's a conversation you have with a child, who is just learning the concept. If you don't want to be reminded to clean up after yourself / be treated like a child, then you act like an adult and do it without being asked. 

Responsibility, What's That?

Anybody catch the song lyric? It's from an MxPx song, which was on the first CD I ever bought. Anyways, not the point. I've been thinking more about how being a COH has affected me, and how it might affect others. 

Take a look at this pamphlet:  http://www.childrenofhoarders.com/COHBrochure-081811.pdf (found via the Hoarder's Son blog - http://www.hoardersson.com/)

They list several key issues that COH may be dealing with, including:

• The fear they may be removed from the home and separated from their parent if the secret is discovered.
• Shame, and unhealthy guilt it’s their fault.
• Believing that objects or animals are more important than they are.
• A feeling of responsibility for their hoarding parent.

As a child I was very afraid to tell anyone about my mother's problem, "for fear of being removed from the home." It was a fear of the unknown really. I knew I wasn't happy where I was, but I also understood that I was, fundamentally, safe, and that I would eventually get out. My mother fed this fear. When I threatened to tell someone, she would say, "Go ahead, but you'll be put in foster care, where you'll probably be sexually abused and nobody will pay for your fancy education." Who knows what kind of foster family I might have ended up with, but I did have to agree with her about my education. My mom did sacrifice a lot for my education (although by sophomore year of high school I was on a full-ride scholarship, and I paid - rather, I'm still paying - for college and grad school all on my own), and I really enjoyed my private school. Still, I would fantasize about getting up the guts to tell an adult, and having them rescue me. 

Shame - of course, or maybe mostly embarrassment. Are they the same thing? They're related at least. I don't think I ever really thought it was my fault that it happened, but I felt it was my responsibility to help hide it, if only just for the selfish reason of humiliation.

I never felt that objects or animals were more important than me. Thankfully, my mom doesn't hoard animals, and she's relatively good about not keeping rotting food (note the "relatively"). The things my mother hoards - particularly in the house I grew up in - are so obviously trash. Paper is the biggest culprit. She can't throw away magazines, or newspapers, or any of her college papers or notes from when she went back to school. I knew she loved me, and I knew the paper was trash, so I never felt like she loved the stuff more than me. I'm sure I had moments of wishing that she would dump it all as a show of love for me, but, in general, I don't think this weighed on me too heavily.

Responsibility though...this one I felt / feel. But, well, maybe I'm a bad daughter / person, but I felt / feel responsibility for the places my mother has trashed / is trashing more than I felt / feel responsibility for her. By the time I was in high school I understood the concept of rent, or the amount of money required to own a home, and I was aware that my mom was not paying rent to my grandma. She claims she did, off and on when she could, but clearly she wasn't paying what anyone else would have had to pay to rent that home. As I looked forward to moving out when I reached college, I became consumed with guilt at the idea of leaving the house in that state. I knew it wasn't my fault that it got that way, but I also knew that my mom wasn't going to do anything about it, and so, in my mind, it became my responsibility. When my mom slowly started spending more and more nights at Jack's house, and I eventually did as well, this feeling of responsibility increased. Were we really just going to walk away from a house, full to the brim? Apparently so; my mom seemed to feel no responsibility towards that home. My high school diary is FULL of these thoughts. 

My mom's siblings broke in an dumped everything shortly after I graduated college. I remember when my mom found out and called me in a panic. All I felt was sad that they hadn't thought me adult enough to call me ahead of time and have me help. I had truly failed my responsibility to the house and my grandma. 

I think I could just cut ties with her now if it weren't for Jack. I've never met my father, and while Jack and I aren't very emotionally close (he's not a big talker; it's kind of hard to get close to him), he's been very good to me - and my mom - and I guess he's the closest thing to a father I'll ever have. I feel a responsibility to him. She is a problem, and I can't just walk away and leave her for him to deal with all on his own. I'm also scared shitless of the moment when his patience finally breaks and she ends up on my doorstep, so this sense of responsibility to him isn't entirely selfless. Again, maybe I'm a bad person - already admitted it. 

Sentimental Objects

A year or so ago I was home for a friend's wedding. I have one trunk stored at Jack's house, in the basement (well, it was in the basement, till my mom decided it was in the way - because she needs the entire basement - and had him move it to under a pile of her junk in the garage). It contains ALL of my sentimental objects from childhood to the present. Every time I've been home since leaving to live back east I look through it and reminisce. But if I don't remember why a particular note that contains an inside joke between friends was funny anymore, I throw it out. If I want to add a stack of love notes from a current boyfriend, I cull through my stack of love notes from the last boyfriend and only keep one or two that are particularly special. Every time I throw something away from this trunk my mom howls about what an unfeeling person I am. It's gotten to the point that I carefully destroy things before I throw them away so she won't fish through the trash to rescue old letters to me to keep for herself. Or, I pack things and fly them back with me so that I can dispose of them in my own trash, where I know they will not grow legs and climb out.

So anyways, I was out for a friend's wedding and I was looking through my trunk, and I noticed a bag of clothes nearby. They looked familiar, so I opened the bag up. It was a bag of my old clothes from high school. Nothing particularly special, like a prom dress or anything, just some old sweaters, jeans, etc. No chance they will fit me again, and no chance they ever would have fit my mom. I was surprised they were still around. They must have been things I didn't take to college with me, so I obviously wasn't attached to them. "Can I donate this somewhere Mom? They're my old clothes...I don't think you need to keep my old things on top of your own." I pointed out. "Well, you might have worn them, but since they're your clothes from high school, I probably bought them, so I think that they're mine to decide what to do with, and I want to save them." By high school I actually had a job and bought much of my own clothing at thrift stores, but that's really beside the point; yes, she may have bought some of those clothes...not a reason to hold on to them. I queried, "Do you think I might fit them again at some point? Are you saving them to one day give to my hypothetical future child? Do you have project ideas to use them? Do you think a t-shirt from the late 90s might one day be worth money?" The usual response: "I don't have to justify why I save what I do."

Before moving back I went through all mine and my boyfriend's things and made a hefty donation. I do this every time we move, and sometimes just for fun. No point moving things you haven't used in a while and probably won't start using again. This weekend I'm going to the Maker Faire (a convention with crafts people and DIY technology, etc) with an old friend of mine. We used to go when we were in college, and this is the first time I've been in town for it in six years. Our favorite place to visit there was a giant clothing swap. There are all these silk screen stations and sewing machines to alter clothes you pick up right there. I think the first time we went we spent most of the day there. But, it's a swap, so to get in, you have to bring something to donate to the pile. Since I just moved, I don't have any spare clothes lying around. 

Light bulb! You know where I'm going with this? "Hey mom...you know that bag of my old high school clothes that you wouldn't donate last year that have stayed sitting out on the patio untouched for the last year? Could I possibly take that to Maker Faire so I could get into the swap meet?" No. "What about just some of it?" No. "Why not?"

"Because you'll never be in high school again. Stop pestering me."

So I tried a gentler tactic. "I won't ever be in high school again, but do those clothes" (which I guarantee she hasn't looked at since she bagged them up and put them downstairs) "help you remember the person I was then?" I suggested, "What if you just keep my high school uniform? Or we could go through the bag together and see if a particular piece or two hold particular memories, and donate the rest." No. 

She went so far as to pull out a few of her own pieces of clothing (that still fit her...one blouse that still has tags) to give me for the swap to shut me up about my old high school clothes. I'm glad for anything to leave the house, but is that not ridiculous?

If I told this story to a stranger they might almost think it her answer was sweet. But for a hoarder, EV.ER.Y.THING. is a sentimental object. How does anything hold meaning if everything holds meaning? 

A Place for Everything, and Everything In It's Place

A few nights ago we had a short blackout. My mom pulled out a flashlight from a junk drawer. Days later, the flashlight was still sitting in the bathroom, where she last had it when the power went back on. I put it away this morning. This happens a lot. If she's looking at a book, it doesn't go back on a bookshelf when she's done. It sits on the couch cushion next to her and a pile of other discards grows around it until there's a big mess, which she "deals with" - only when it becomes inconvenient to her - by shoving it all in a bag or box. 

When I first got here, I told her a story about a friend of mine from grad school. Jess is a little bit scattered, but organized in her own way. I would never have been able to borrow notes from her, for example, because they wouldn't have made any sense to me, but you could see that there was a structure present. She was hired to clean and organize the theatre department's prop storage the summer between our first and second year (I have an MA in Theatre Arts). Nobody was supervising her, because Jess is a hard worker. Late in the summer I got a call from Jess. She asked, "Santina, what playwright do you associate most with stoves?" What? Why? "Well, I've organized everything by the playwright I most associate it with; so, like, all the chairs are in the Ionesco room, because he wrote The Chairs." "Um, Jess..." I responded, "does Ward [the prop master] know you're using this...'system'?" 

Ward was pretty pissed when he found out, but to Jess's credit, she knew were everything was right away for the next year. She took big piles of dusty props that were in no order and she sorted like with like - in a system that made sense to her - and put everything on shelves - in a system that made sense to her - and it was visibly much neater, and was easily accessible for her - because the system made sense to her. The point is that she did a lot of work, and she did use a system, it's just that when she graduated a year later nobody else could find anything in prop storage because the system only made sense in Jess's mind. 

I shared this story with my mom soon after I returned home because I wanted to stress that I was there to help her do things in a way that made sense to her. I am a really good organizer, and my systems are more generally logical - other's tend to be able to find their way around a space that I've set up. However, I don't want to force my systems on my mom. I want the mess to be cleaned in a way that makes sense to her, so that she will be able to maintain it. 

Sharing this story with my mom was a mistake. It has since been twisted; any time I move anything I am "imposing my system instead of letting her do it her way." But, no system is not a system. Jess did actual work, with a visually measurable impact, that created more space and made finding things easier (for her). My mom leaves things wherever they land till they are in the way, then she bags them up, shoves them in a corner, and re-buys things because she can't find the things she's already bought. This is not a system. 

Baby Steps

This blog is turning out to me more negative than I had hoped when I began it. I don't know why, but when I moved home from the Midwest, I had really really high hopes that my mom and I would achieve some kind of breakthrough and I would be able to be a positive force in her life, and show her the joy of a clean living space. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been away for six years and hadn't come face to face with my mom's stubbornness as often in those years, or the fact that I as so miserable in Chicago that I started to see home with overly rose tinted glasses. At any rate, I was sure that I was going to have the one COH blog that was happily recording progress stories.

Things have not gone according to plan. But, on the eve of Mother's Day, I thought I'd take a break from the anger and frustration to celebrate a tiny baby step I saw my mother make the other day. My mom has been recycling a good amount of paper the last few weeks - filling the bin. For someone who has a particular issue with paper, this is a step in and of itself. In particular, the other day I saw her recycle half of a ripped up Christmas cracker (those tubes with little goodies inside and you pull on either end of the paper to open them). Why is this significant? Because it wasn't an old receipt that you couldn't read the numbers on anymore, or a TV guide so old that some of the shows aren't on the air anymore; it was a solid 6" x 4" ish piece of pretty gold paper with an embossed design and embedded glitter. "You could do something with that."

For a woman who refuses to throw away an expired coupon in the kitchen junk drawer because it features a one inch picture of the Campbell's soup kid in a graduation cap (an old version of their "labels for education" logo) that is "so cute!...You could cut it out and do something with it," throwing away a solid scrap of quality paper is a step.

Happy Mother's Day to all those out there who may be struggling with their own mothers as well!