Your're tacky and I hate you

“You're tacky and I hate you!” -Billy from School of Rock (2003)

I recently read a short story written by my best friend exploring her relationship with her mother. I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the close bond she spoke of, reaching all the way back to her difficult birth.

I think of my best friend and her sister like the sisters I never had, and their mother has a special place in my heart. She is beautiful, has a dry wit, great taste, and writes in a way I could only dream of. My friends’ mother had a difficult relationship with her own mother and I have always felt comfortable sharing my darkest feelings on the matter of my relationship with my mother, with her.

I was adopted at four months and I consider this the reason why a) I felt displaced all of my childhood and b) I felt a cold animosity between my mother and me.

As a small child, I would look upon my mother as the epitome of beauty; she had long red hair, always done; her nails were done, her face was done, and her clothes were pressed. Men whistled at her, and she would toss them a dirty look, but I’m sure she loved the attention. She was not very articulate, but her smile was magnificent. My mum showed me how to be feminine and flirtatious; she taught me from a young age that being an attractive woman could be powerful.

I was obsessed with beauty as a child. I considered the difference between beautiful and pretty; Audrey Hepburn was pretty, and Sophia Lauren was beautiful. I loved Olivia Newton-John—she was pretty, and then she was sexy. My husband, who happens to be one of the funniest people I have ever met, said one of the funniest things about my childhood favorite movie: “Grease taught women that to win the guy, they should start smoking and dress like a slut.” Around the time Grease was made and Legs and Co. performed each Thursday evening on Top of the Pops, a family friend asked me what I’d like to be when I grew up. The answer was easy: “I want to be sexy.”

I begged my mother for a pair of tight, black, satin pants like the ones worn by Sandy in Grease. Grease came out in 1978 when I was nine years old. When I was twelve, my mum came home from C&A with a pair of hot pink, slightly flared, satin, stretchy pants; they were hideous. I was the new kid in school, and I braces on my teeth to straighten the front tooth that overlapped. My mother purchased a V-back, V-front, pastel pink T-shirt and a pair of old-lady, cream-colored, strappy sandals to complete the look and then insisted I wore the look to the school disco. I don’t think I ever lived it down.

My mother is very easy to poke fun at; her behavior at times has seemed so extreme that she resembles a character in a sitcom more than an actual person. Poking fun at my mother has always helped me deal with the sadness of our tempestuous relationship. My close friends enabled me to vilify her at times.

My best friend, Lizzie McPhee, a spritely and bubbly friend I had met while at a drama camp when I was sixteen years old, would call my mother “eye-shadow woman.” My mother disliked Lizzie tremendously, and whenever Lizzie would come over to my house to stay, my mother did her best to make us both feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. I loved to stay at Lizzie’s house, where her family seemed laid back and cool. Lizzie would take a bath and ask me to sit and talk to her while she lay soaking in the warm water, her perfect round breasts floating as she shaved her stretched out legs. I adored Lizzie, almost as if it were teenage love. Her mother had been an artist; she was married to a photographer for the Guardian newspaper. His award-winning photos and her art adorned the walls at their suburban home. There was orderly chaos in their house; music played, and friends could come and go as they pleased. I felt relaxed and happy there and dreaded going home to my uptight, angry mother.

It is customary in England to sit around the dinner table on a Sunday evening and talk politics, philosophy, etc. My father loved to play devil’s advocate; I never knew what his true political or philosophical beliefs were, as he always took the opposing argument. My mother had very little to say on any matter, but would laugh gleefully when my father shot down any of my arguments. I think she despised the fact that I was able to hold my own in debate. I do appreciate those dinnertime debates however, because it taught me how to draw my own conclusions in life. I was not swayed one way or another politically or philosophically. I noticed as I got older just how much I disagreed with my mother on everything: fashion, art, music, culture, and values.

I clearly remember walking through the city streets of Manchester and spotting a homeless teenager sitting with a dog and a sign which read “hungry and homeless.” My mother shook her head in disgust and indignantly said, “It’s one thing if she chooses to live on the street, but she shouldn’t subject the dog to it.” It was this kind of bizarre mindset that seemed so outrageous to me; it became the subject of ridicule in my opinion of her. As for her level of taste, I began to see this as not only questionable, but lacking in any sophistication.

There were some happy times as a child, and there were times I have felt close to my mum, even as an adult. However, I felt it was obvious that she disliked me immensely: “I love you, but I don’t like you.” That sort of gave it away. I was a disappointment; the sweet little girl she thought she’d picked out from the orphanage turned out to be a clumsy, forgetful, messy, obstreperous child who, at times, had a loud mouth and a big temper.

I was one very frustrated kid; I didn’t understand half of what the teachers were talking about in school, mostly because I missed about fifty percent of what they said. School sounded like an endless recording of the adults muffled speaking in the Charlie brown shows. But I clearly remember overhearing a conversation between two classmates, I was around nine years old at the time: “Who do you think is the dumbest, Natasha Bee or Peter Smith?”

Ironically, my best friend was probably the smartest kid in our class and went on to become a doctor. I have always loved smart people, and I don’t think I’m really dumb at all; I just wasn’t really a very good student. My school reports were appalling; parent-teacher conferences must have been terribly disappointing and embarrassing for my parents. "Natasha is a distraction to others.” "Natasha could try harder.” “Natasha is silly.” “Natasha does not take woodwork seriously.” I broke every sewing machine in school. I blew up the test tubes in science. I spent hours standing outside of the classrooms in the corridors, laughing hysterically; something would make me laugh, and the more the teacher told me to stop, the more I would find it funny.

I showed promise as a gymnast as a young girl; I never had lessons, but two of my friends did. They showed me what they learned on the field at school, and I copied. I asked my mother if I could take lessons, but she was afraid I would break my back. This wasn’t actually that unreasonable; by the time I was nine years old, I had been to the emergency room three times for multiple stitches. I had walked into a door, rollerskated into a wall, and tripped and smashed my head on a brick step.

Because I feel as though my mother disliked me so much, I feel permitted to denigrate her in anyway I choose. My mother has an air about her as though she feels better when she is looking down her nose at people she considers beneath her; she is a self-proclaimed snob. However, in my opinion, she does not have this right. In the past, she has worn shell suits; she wears lots and lots of gold jewelry all at once, which looks very tacky. Her house is decorated, and by that, I mean it is adorned with knick-knacks. There is no art to speak of; only decor like one would expect to find in a three-star hotel. She listens to Celine Deon endlessly and puts the word “my” before anything she enjoys as if she holds the monopoly on enjoying such things like “my scallops.” Incidentally, when she spoke of “my” scallops, she expressed her preference to the larger kind, not really grasping that the small, local bay scallops were sweeter and more desirable.