Page 47 - WhyAsInY

WHo are tHese PeoPle? (Part 1)
show. As she got older, she would report that she had been about to say something (which she would, of course, then say) but that, for reasons that she would elaborate on, she had come to the conclusion that that something was incorrect, and that, therefore, it should not have been said. Thereupon, she would explain how she determined what she should have in fact said and, for good measure, say it. There seemed to be nothing that went through her mind that didn’t come out of her mouth, but the most important subject, as she got older, was how she was feeling, about which there would be a bulletin every five minutes or so.
Unfortunately, her constant patter often involved criticizing me. It is not that I didn’t deserve occasional criticism or that it wasn’t clearly her job to make me a better person. But, whether for good or bad, she took her job very seriously—in fact, very, very seriously. I came to feel that there was absolutely nothing that I could do that satisfied her, that there was nothing that I could do that didn’t warrant some improve- ment. I internalized her perspective and would hear her criticisms before she would make them, and when she wasn’t even present. When I was fairly young, a constant refrain of mine was “I’m a failure” (which I pronounced with a w instead of an l, something for which I don’t recall being criticized). I have a lot of difficulty with criticism to this day, often hearing it even when it isn’t intended. Carrying on for her, I have duti- fully become my own greatest critic. (Although, as she might have said, I could be assuming too little about the charity or the lack of insight of others.) Being self-critical can lead to good results from time to time, of course, but it can also make one’s life difficult. This paragraph, for example, far from one of my favorites, has probably taken me longer to write than any other to this point. Although my mother’s criticisms, sharp eye for detail, and inability to be silent when it came to me—the center of her universe—made life pretty difficult at times, both then and now, I do know that much of it proceeded from love.
Unfortunately, while I inherited her critical nature and eye, I believe that I also inherited her concern about appearances and her tendency to care about what others thought of her, and therefore my, actions. (As I perceived it, my father, while also a critic of mine, was far from being a
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