The Art of Complaint

READ BY THE AUTHOR BELOW

My mother was a planner who thrived on a routine. Over an alternating rotation of oatmeal and corn flakes breakfast, each with a half a slice of banana, Mommy let us know what her plans for that coming day were and how difficult they would be. Not that we didn’t know already. 

Wednesdays she had to go bowling, Tuesdays she went grocery shopping—damned people and their shopping carts. Fridays she battled traffic and New Jersey drivers out to Long Island to visit us, spending the night, willing to take care of my babies in the morning and making her requests for dinner known well in advance.

“I had salmon on Tuesday. Make the lemon chicken. And those cookies I like. You brought the wrong ones last week.” 

On purpose, I married the kind of man that would keep all of our favorites stocked, which you know if you’ve been loved by him and I have never regretted, though it’s kept my refrigerator overflowing with cases of things I wouldn’t eat. Except in a pinch. Or another supply chain catastrophe.

My mother voted in every election I remember, and pledged to WNYC radio as religiously as she paid her taxes. Her by-the-book, brutally honest approach to everything was as charming as it was jarring. Her unconditional love was angry, but safe. Armed with a pile of maps, she was ready for any adventure and consistently unforgiving in her honest reporting of the situation as she saw it.

In other words, she complained. A lot. Often on a loop.

Her love was absolute but not particularly flexible. After I left home, she’d kvetch over the phone everyday with her smart, efficient, slightly angry twang that was somewhere between Edith Bunker and Fran Drescher—young people, look it up if you don’t know. 

Errands were a serious obligation and everything was an errand—whether she was taking care of elderly relatives, working late or going bowling. From a pap smear to a chamber music concert on the East River in Brooklyn with her best friend and beloved brother, her tone didn’t change. 

“I have to go get my hair done,” she’d spit. “Then I’m going to the theater.”

My deepest hope in response to her reaction when I was young was to try and make it better for her, to convince her that this phenomenal career she had working on mainframes, the devoted daughters she raised, the comfortable lifestyle she’d lived beneath her means into, was a privilege she’d earned and could enjoy. But she was nothing if not aggrieved. At her insistence life was an ordeal to move through. If you weren’t vigilantly trying to stay on a path, you were bound to fall off a cliff.

I wonder if her, you can’t disappoint me if disappointment is my starting point attitude, comforted her? Was it that the concert on a barge in front of the New York City skyline would be better somehow if she got a jump on complaining about the smell wafting in from the then neon green Gowanus Canal?

When I worried that her microbursts of anger were directed at me, she’d say, “I’m angry at the world. Not you.” It was an answer I could do nothing with. I was not the world. The world chain smoked and told insensitive jokes. The world complained she wasn’t pretty enough and then fawned over a gaggle of young actresses. Or my young friends. I couldn’t help any of that no matter how hard I tried.

Oddly, the death of my father and her subsequent dementia were the two things she didn’t complain about. They sucked up her argumentative dissatisfaction like a vacuum cleaner with a fresh bag, leaving her only a soft surrender to all that worrying that dogged her. 

“Do you ever miss Daddy?” I asked her before it was all washed away.

She laughed like I was an idiot, and instead complained. “You come too often. Go take care of your family.”

Beyond her litany of obligations and complaints, her other, rarely seen side began shining through. Who knew she was a ball of love and light with an easy smile hidden beneath her negative scrim of self preservation?

As she slid further down into the same senility that took her father, she managed to relax her way into a new boyfriend, both of them just this side of oblivion. Her normally angry eyes showed a romance that turned her all but girlish. I love that she had that chance.

The older I get, the more I find myself agreeing with her. Nothing is ever easy or just plain fun. I have to redo the basement. I’d better take those puppies out for a hike in my storybook woods here at the height of leaf season!

In this post sense world, complaining is fun. Some people are aces at it. Sometimes it’s even the point. I have the instinct to be, but doomsaying and kvetching are contagious and hard to recover from.

I used to quiet my mother’s balloon screeching demons in my mind by being of service. When I’m trying to help someone else, whether it’s proofreading an essay, or cleaning up random garbage I see along the road, it’s hard to dwell. Of course cocktails and television work, too. Nightly. In moderation. Either way, getting away from myself is the answer. Except when I just want to complain.

Only on this end of the scale is the look on mother’s face when her defenses were gone. It made her happy—a thing I didn’t know her to be before. Her Hakuna Matata, no worries life seemed to rekindle a light somewhere within her, finally giving her a chance to dance like everyone could see. And she liked it. She was all emotion, and none of it was rage. 

I can keep looking through her dingy glasses, or reach out for that happy place inside myself before I can’t remember it. 

Which was on my mind going to an early dinner in a new-to-me Mexican restaurant, with one of my crew of do-gooding friends before my writing group. Instead of complaining about not having enough time to feed the dogs and let them out before I left, I simply looked forward to dinner. 

Shut up, I told myself, drink the margarita and try not bitch about the poop they will leave as an offering. Then write a piece that is worthy of posting, not because I have to but because I can. And it’s my mother’s birthday. And her brother only now passed away.

If you don’t like it, stick your complaints in the comments. I’m sure to read them.