Life Support

I’m in grad school. Does my mother really need to check my research paper for grammatical errors and awkward word pairings? I think to myself, practically stomping my feet down the hall.

I’d sent my completed (on Saturday, hah!) paper to my mother, thinking she’d be proud of me and enjoy the topic.

Fast forward to Monday night, I’m at work late about to send it off to my professor, but before I do I’m compelled to call her and say, “I’m turning my paper in!”

Why did the child in me want to run to her mom for approbation? I’m not even going to hide it, there is no psycho-analysis that needs to be done, it’s blatant.

She had offered to correct some of my grammar mistakes over the weekend, but I had to call to let her know I fine-toothed it myself, and tell her it’d be fine, thanks for your help and I gotta go, buh-bye.

“Well, there was something in the first paragraph.” She says in a friendly yet paradoxically ominous voice that all moms must be granted simultaneously to giving birth. Other similar phrases include universal favorites such as, “You don’t want to eat that before dinner.” Or, “You should think twice about going to ____________ with that boy/girl.”

My mother is an English teacher. A damn good one too. She helped me craft every paper I’d written in high school and probably college, not write, but polish. She’s the queen of polish…and while my tax professor mandated no one could even sneeze near my last research report, I figured my mom could check for errors on this one.

“Okay, what is it?” I ask.

“Well, do you really want to say, ‘It must be noted that…’ or ‘However?’”

“However…I guess is better…kay, is that all?”

“Well, the next paragraph…”

And so on. She’s right. Of course she’s right. She taught English for a bajillion years, she's right. But I’m not a dummy and my paper already stands on its own. But still, I tell her to email me her suggestions. What’s going on here?

She’s still alive. I lost my father, but she is still alive. She is here. And I need her.

Not in the same ways, but in some ways. I don’t really need her to check my paper, I’m graded mostly on content, and my grammar is certainly acceptable at this point…but it is a tie we have, the two of us, discussing, arguing over my work, her suggestions. It’s so familiar.

I’m uneasy about it to tell you the truth. Part of me wants to send my paper without her flourishes, part of me knows she wouldn’t care, but part of me knows we’d both be wounded by it.

Just another tiny severing of influence and control…

Oh wait, I just got an email from her...