She couldn’t have stood much more than 5’2” tall. She wore thick, oversized glasses and had dark, black, short hair. I assumed that years later, in her old age, she would look like a heavier version of Sophia from Golden Girls – the fiery, speak-her-mind, no nonsense matriarch who both epitomized, and was a caricature of, the stereotypical Italian grandmother. This was Rita, the mother of my first girlfriend, a woman who was very much my first mother-in-law without the in-law part. She was stern. She lived a modern day Catholic lifestyle – she went to church on Sundays, but maybe picked which sins she would allow herself. She was fond of using the word shit (as in “he thinks he’s hot shit”) but never anything much worse than that and would often say things like “I’m so pissed off I could spit.” She was frequently pissed off. She had high blood pressure, and when she would get angry it became a weapon of guilt – “These little shits know I have high blood pressure, they must be trying to kill me.”
More often than not, my girlfriend and I thought of her as a type of mean step-mother who needed to be appeased, placated, accommodated, and tolerated. They, my girlfriend and Rita, had a tense relationship – one that was full of I-hate-you moments coming from my girlfriend and you’re-such-a-little-ingrate moments coming from Rita. In other words, they had an all-too-typical American mother-daughter relationship.
This past Tuesday, a little after lunch, I stood at my kitchen sink washing and rinsing my dishes. I have a double sink – standard fare for most kitchens. We did not have a double sink in the house I grew up in. As I stood there, letting the water run as I washed and rinsed (a bad habit that I’ve recently picked up – I’m usually a conservationist and turn the water off), I remembered helping with the dishes at my girlfriend’s house. They had a double sink. One of the sinks, usually the one on the left, always had a beige plastic tub in it. There was a process to doing the dishes in Rita’s kitchen. I can’t remember what that process was, and I’m trying to reconstruct the logic of the tub of water. It was either to help with the washing and scrubbing, or with the rinsing. Dishes always needed to be done shortly after a meal. Done meant washed, rinsed, dried and put away – or thoroughly cleaned of food scraps and loaded into the dishwasher. The dishwasher also needed to be unloaded promptly after it finished running.
My girlfriend had a lot of chores and Rita had very specific ways in which she wanted things done. I think this is where the wicked step-mother image came from. Poor Cinderella can’t go to the ball because she’s stuck scrubbing the floors as Rita cackles or plucks a hair from the wart on her chin (I don’t recall her doing either of those things, but you get the visual). My girlfriend was expected to sweep the kitchen every day (usually more than once). She was responsible for the dishes after most meals and sometimes the cooking. At least once a week she had to vacuum the house, dust everything, and clean the bathrooms. She hated vacuuming the steps and wasn’t a fan of cleaning the toilets or her brother’s piss splatter on the floor around the toilet. She also had to do the laundry and take out the trash. In the summer, she was in charge of cleaning the pool. Her brother had to mow the lawn. I think that was his only chore. I suspect this was Rita’s way of raising a responsible woman who would be a good wife and a masculine son who would do the manly things around the house. Rita seemed to buy in to typical gender roles.
I spent a lot of time at my girlfriend’s house. On weekends, I was allowed to sleep over (downstairs on the sofa of course). Once, Rita made me go to church – I didn’t really care for the experience. Some Sundays, I was allowed to stay back and just hung out at the house while they went to church, or I’d walk home. My girlfriend lived about a mile or two from me. Sometimes I felt a little like a stray who had been taken in. Rita and the family liked me, I was considerate and upstanding. All in all, not a bad kid. Her daughter could have done worse.
Standing at the sink and remembering doing dishes in Rita’s kitchen, I started to realize the impact those moments had on who I am and how I am in the world. In order for my girlfriend to be allowed to do anything, her chores had to be done. Therefore, it was in my interest to help her out. And so, before I graduated high school, I had become a fairly domesticated “husband.” I had learned to get the unpleasantries of life out of the way so that we might have our freedom and fun. I had learned to jump in when I saw my partner distressed. I had begun to over-appreciate and value our time together and, perhaps, resent those chores as an intrusion on our collective happiness. This is how bubbles get built. It was us against the chores, us against Rita, us against the outside world. But, I suspect that more than anything, I was learning how to work as a team, how to be a partner. I was learning that together, even dishes might not seem so bad.
Over time, these things became more ingrained. Helping out became less about saving her from tyranny and more about doing the right and responsible thing. The funny thing is, I was not a particularly neat or overly-responsible child. I can remember causing consternation for my parents, mostly my mother, by not keeping a clean room. My brother and I lived like slobs. I don’t think we helped out much. I know we didn’t help out much. I’m sure we were threatened with being grounded, and I think I remember one time all of our stuff was piled in the middle of the room and we were given a deadline to clean it up or it all goes. I’m not sure why I wasn’t motivated by the potential loss of my own freedom or my stuff. Perhaps I was too young or just didn’t see those potential losses as all that big a deal. I think I also knew that my parents didn’t have the same priorities – dad didn’t care all that much if we had clean rooms (so long as we got good grades) – and he was the real enforcer, the punisher to be feared. Or maybe it’s the bigger lesson about motivation. Threats to take things away are often less effective than the promise of a reward. On an instinctual level, we learn to avoid unpleasant things, but we strive for what brings us, or those around us, pleasure. Cleaning my room wouldn’t make my parents happy and wouldn’t make me happy – it would just make them less frustrated and might prevent me from being punished… and to be clear, they were seldom mad at us and I almost never got punished. However, my girlfriend was always being threatened with punishment and helping her absolutely eased her burdens – which, in turn, made me happy. Helping her also meant that we would get what all teenagers want, the chance to just be left alone and not bothered, the opportunity to be two kids in love.
In many of my readings about relationships and attachment theory, the literature suggests that there are a few key moments in a person’s life that influence how they attach to others. The big moments are in their first years of life and how they attach to their parents. Adolescence, the middle school years, become influential because that’s when the hormones are kicking in and kids begin to develop a sense of autonomy and a strong peer network. The first long and intimate romantic relationship is another strongly influential piece of the puzzle. None of this is hard science. We are not static and unchanging. But if we want to understand a little about who we are today and why we do what we do, it seems helpful to reflect on where we’ve been.
Rita was tough on my girlfriend. I resented her for that. I often thought she was unfair, though I suspect she was fairer than I gave her credit for being. The two of them complained about each other quite a bit. Rita would often call her daughter a little witch – sometimes to her face “ohhh, you’re such a little witch.” Had she become my mother-in-law, we would have butted heads often. Then and there as teen and a guest and not quite with a fully-developed sense of self or voice, I mostly stayed in my place. This isn’t to say Rita was or is a bad person. She took me in and often treated me like her own kid (for better or worse). I suspect I learned a thing or two about nuance and tact in dealing with Rita. As one half of a couple, I learned the value of a shared enemy, though I’m sure there were times that we took it out on each other. Perhaps most valuable of all, standing next to my girlfriend in Rita’s kitchen over Rita’s double sink and beige plastic tub I learned to appreciate the smallest of moments and the profound significance and beauty of coordinated movement – you wash, I’ll dry.