I had one of *those* talks with my mother.

[treeskin]

You know, the talks where you find yourself biting your tongue half the time, not saying what you
really feel in order to keep the peace. At least she wasn't ranting about something I or my sister did. Or maybe not. That would have been something I'd have stood up to.

Most of my friends know my mom teaches at a small rural Kansas school district (or you do now). She teaches fifth and sixth grade science and social studies, and a reading class, her largest class has 26 students. Small school. The local folks will also remember that Kansans voted a conservative state school board back into office, and the evolution/creation in schools debate is heating up again.

Anyway, the phone call....

While my mom sat there and told me she didn't like the increasing push for teaching Intelligent Design in science classrooms, she also said she wasn't that worried about it. That ID was covered in material covered in junior high and high school, and it wasn't her problem. I'm not comfortable with that position, but I can understand that she already has a lot on her plate in her job.

What really got me was her statement, "you know, you just can't teach social studies without bringing up the Bible." ??????? She went on to tell me how her students got excited when they figured out the Sumerians in her class were the same people they learned about in Sunday school. And then, the kicker: when her students asked her about the overlap, she tells them that just proves that the Bible is true.

Gods above and below.

I couldn't think of anything to say to that. And I should have, because I know that were I a parent whose child came home and told me about this, I'd be up in arms, and on a march to the school district's office with a complaint. Not because she's not a good teacher, because I think she is in most ways, but because it's a public school, and "this proves the Bible is true" has absolutely no place in a fifth-grade social studies class.

There are so many other ways that question could have been answered, starting with simply, "these are two ways of looking at the same events" and moving back to the topic. Mom says she's also told her students she's not supposed to mention God in the classroom, and the way she repeated herself to me sounded...like an instruction she disagreed with, something she'll follow in the surface, but break in spirit.

Until now, my mom's conscience and strong stand for teaching the basics, without frills and Powerpoint, has maintained my belief that some public schools still perform the function for which they were founded. But Mom told me flat out last night that she thinks I got a better education than her current students are getting, simply because of curriculum changes and the month spent on state and federal testing. She's probably right. Between that, and well-meaning people like my mother bringing God into the public schools, I've got to worry about the generation that getting ready to start school.



I guess this is one more thing that shows how people become what they surround themselves with. Mom starting going to church actively (2-3 times a week, in a town 50 miles away) about seven years ago, and she's becoming more conservative each year. The more often she's going to church, the more comments she makes to By & I about attending church with her when she visits. Or about my sister's conversion to Catholicism (which she disapproves of highly, because we all know Catholics are idol-worshipping and misguided, just a step up from the pagans). Or comments about how she thinks all children should go to Sunday school, from an early age, because they learn to sit still and pay attention there (nothing a good preschool wouldn't do).

It hurts to see, because it seems like a switch is thrown whenever God is mentioned, that turns off the analytical and questioning part of her brain. And Mom's a smart woman, in most areas of her life. She's so matter-of-fact about her Christianity, so blinded now to anything else that might exist.

I should have had the religion talk with Mom years ago; it looks impossible now. The world outside her church windows is very different from the world under my tree.

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten that your sister converted. Older sister pagan, younger sister Catholic--where have I heard that before? :)

As for the religion talk...you hold all the power there. Even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes.

The aunt, by the way, who has been running around telling people that I'm an evil devil-worshipper, did not come to the funeral. I was bracing myself for a confrontation, but all was well.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

Outside of our similar split families, that does sound like an old story, doesn't it? Sis converted because Harry's family is Catholic, and even though he's not at all devout, he's very attached to the idea of his family being Catholic. Sis thought her conversion would help the marriage. You know how well that worked.

I know I hold the power, that I *choose* to remain in contact with my family, but it does frustrate me at times. I'm not willing to walk away from them, but gee whiz, the family drives me nuts at times like these. Mom looks on Muslims and Jews (and Catholics) as good-intentioned but misguided, and everyone else is strange and lost and she just doesn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to follow her faith. I don't know how to talk to that.

By's commented more than once on how much easier some things would be if we didn't have to deal with my family in particular, though he'd rather not deal with his own either. The physical distance makes his folks easier to deal with.

A morbid thought...Mom's family tends to be long-lived, hitting 80 or more, but with Mom's weight and general health she's likely to go sooner. If I continue as I have been with Mom, then gee, when I'm 60, I can finally be out to the whole damn world.

I'm glad the funeral went well for you. We were thinking of you :)

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

Your mother might be doing the standard thing for her age and culture, allowing aging and the advancing prospects of death corral her more and more narrowly into Xtianity. I don't envy you the position--either I'm a complete bastard or my immediate family is just more tolerant (or both). I have made no secret of my apostasy, on the general grounds that they, as my family, are rather obliged to a) act like my family and accept it or b) be unfilial and reject me. But, then, I'm far less emotionally invested in "good" relationships with my blood-kin that almost everyone I know.

On the other hand, I don't see how living a "lie", even a relatively "benign" one, is going to do your relationship with your mother any good. It would seem to foster some bad energy just by virtue of the fact that what should be out in the open and dealt with must sit and fester and cook over a long time. Do you really want to try and maintain this for another 30 years? On the higher level, it's doing no spiritual good for your mother to let her continue in her ignorance and prejudice regarding other people's beliefs. It might do her a world of good to have to face up to these things; if she's truly a well-meaning and intelligent person, then she has the resources for increased wisdom and tolerance within her.

Regarding the schools thing...all the more reason for mom to have to face up to the fact that she's becoming increasingly intolerant, and also violating the law. It's these stories that reinforce my intention to keep any future progeny of mine far away from midwestern public schools at all costs.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

I've been having this argument with myself for years. You're not saying anything that I haven't said to myself.

I've considered myself pagan since 17, I just didn't try to practice until I'd left her house. My reasons for not coming out to her early on were good-intentioned. In that one year (1990)I'd been through some serious sexual trauma (more than once, one incident occuring in her house), watched three older relatives die of cancer, and dealt with the aftermath when the art teacher at our school (who was a friend of Mom's) shot his family and then himself. I didn't bring it up then, because Mom already had a LOT to deal with. Then I went off to college, joined marching band, and couldn't come home as often as she wanted me to, and she was very upset about that. So again, I kept quiet, not wanting to rock the boat any more that I already had. At the end of my first year, I moved in with Byron, Mom and I had some very painful arguments (mostly about how inappropriate it would look for her daughter to live with a boy), and after that we more or less didn't speak for two years. And again, I said nothing.

Not saying that keeping quiet was the wisest thing to do any of these times, just presenting what was happening and why. I've lived with not showing my complete self to my family for 15+ years now, and I'm used to it. Not happy about it, but I am used to it. Barring one or other of us shifting further away from center (which is possible, I admit, I'm as liberal as she is conservative), I can keep going this way. The relationship was damaged a long time ago, by a lot of little things Mom thinks were unimportant. I was reconciled to that distance with the family before I left the church.

Part of why I've not said anything recently was that in order to explain my faith to her, I'd have to explain why I made the choices I did. I simply don't have the energy to tell my mother that I was raped by my senior prom date under her roof. That experience (and the times later) ties in very strongly to why I left the church and became pagan, I don't know if I could explain one without the other. Before, I couldn't talk about it at all, now I don't see the need. Not knowing this doesn't hurt her. And I think knowing would, because she'd find my not telling her as hurtful as the fact that it happened. (My family's weird that way. We all hide stuff from each other, to spare people's feelings, then get mad when we find out, because the person invovled hadn't broadcast it to the world.)

Now, none of the above was a good reason for not saying something about the God in school comments. I should have. I was just so surprised to hear those words coming from my mother, I didn't know what to say. I'm thinking about that now, about how to bring it up, so it does make her think, and it's not hurtful.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

La soeur was looking for something. I don't know that she found it, but I know that she likes being Catholic, at least for now. One of the things that mystifies me about the cult I was raised in is that when people do manage to leave, they tend to religion-hop like crazy. I think it's some sort of weird acquired multiple-spirituality-disorder thing, where they don't see anything inherently contradictory in believing radically different things on alternate years because the cult changed its stance on various things 180° and then back again with no explanation, so they're okay with pushing the lever on the mental toilet and watching everything they so devoutly believed last month go down the drain. I have seen it over and over again in people who left the cult, or who were left by the cult. The fragmentation and infighting at Headquarters left a lot of people behind even before the shift from seventh-day OT beliefs to Sunday evangelicals happened. Literally left them behind--as ministers left, churches closed, and since in the Midwest particularly many ministers had at least two and sometimes as many as five churches, one minister could leave a very large hole in an area. Mom and Dad apparently left the cult partially because they got sick up and fed with driving over three hours every Saturday to church, one way, and they stopped going when the minister arbitrarily changed the time services began to 8am. Of course, I didn't hear that until yesterday, and it happened circa 1998 and possibly earlier.

Cathy and Joe (and perforce Beth as well) have gone back to some sort of weird messianic Judaism again, after a short stint as some sort of weird Amish split. This is fairly typical, actually, although I've never wanted to be anything but what I am.

Family is weird. I say that to myself a lot. There are power issues that take decades to work themselves out, even in happy and "normal" families, I think. We are very alike, I sometimes think, and the funny thing is that our sisters are very alike as well. Yours married to get out of the house and mine doesn't date, in the hopes of doing the same thing, but their reactions to the differing pressures of being the younger sister come from similar places. It's a little weird.

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know...:( No easy solution, and we've talked some about this stuff before. It just pains me to see it, sometimes, and I wish you (and several others in my tribe) didn't have to make these choices. It really sucks. And it makes me rather angry at people's parentals/family in general that any of us have to creep around and pretend to be what we aren't. *sigh* Anyhow, hope I didn't sound unsympathetic, I sympathise entirely with so much of it. Possibly see you tonight at FF?

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

Speaking of old power issues and taking decades to work things out, I've been thinking about my sister a lot lately, and wondering why she's stayed married. I think I've come up with something: I know how much Mom felt like she was a "failure" for not making the marriage work, despite the face that she did the only thing possible to maintain the family's emotional and physical health. I know that Mom and Sis both look down on most of my cousins*, because the other two girls have children out of wedlock (my oldest cousin, Lynette, had both of her kids before she was out of high school or married the first time), and because half of my cousins made poor marriage choices and have been married and divorced at least once. I suppose Cole has avoided that particular pit, and that's something to be thankful for. But Sis is Very Stubborn (just like the rest of us), adn I think she is determined to not be a "failure" like the cousins she looks down on. And that's precisely the trap Mom worked herself into.


* I look down on those same cousins, but it's because they've treated Mom and Sis and I like poor country cousins my whole life, been embarassed and uncomfortable around Grandma because she's poor, and doen their best to pretend that Grandma's relatives (mostly poor white folk) don't exist. I like to think my reason is better.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that I pretend to be something I'm not, I just don't admit all that I am in front of Mom. So there are gaps in what I present to her, and I expect she's perceptive to enough to pick that up. But we're both polite, and tired of an already strained extended family (as in, Mom's not speaking to one of her brothers, and rarely talks to the other, for various reasons), so neither of us say anything.

By will be at First Friday, I'm going to stay home and go to bed early. I started the work week with two nights of 5 hrs sleep, and that's just not enough.