Sars —

I have three sheddy cats and lots of tile –- I find that the dry Swiffer cloths can get stuck in the grout and leave more white fluffy mess to clean up, so I just vacuum the tiles instead of sweeping. I vacuum once a week and mop every other weekend, or even farther between if I can get away with just spot-cleaning. Most vacuums (even my $40 cheapie) have a “bare floor” setting specifically for this kind of thing –- not to mention that the kitties make themselves scarce when I turn it on.

Hope this helps the Phoenician!

And You Will Know Me By The Trail Of Cat Hair

Dear Trail,

Thanks for the tip!Other readers suggested a bare-floors/hardwood-setting vacuuming every few days, and they had the following other hints for dealing with tile flooring; if I got it more than once, it’s asterisked.

A Dustbuster-type hand vac for quick clean-up/corners *
A big push broom
The cloth-type push broom, like janitors use
iRobot’s Roomba or Scooba *
Shark’s Cordless Sweeper *
Swiffer Vac *
Swiffer Wet Jet
Hoover Floormate *
An air purifier, to control the dust *
Draft blockers, ditto
A damp mop *
Take your shoes off at the door
Area rugs *
Any canister vac *
Magic Mop
Dirt Devil’s BroomVac *
Clorox ReadyMop
Hardwood Floor ‘N More dust mop
Shop-Vac
Enjo floor cleaners
A HEPA filter for the vacuum *
Learn to live with a certain amount of dust *

Hello, I desperately need some perspective!

I am divorced, 39, good job, great boyfriend, nice condo, no kids, two fat kitties, lots of friends, fun vacations, et cetera. Nice life. I like it. It is actually the life I have always wanted for myself — and how many people do you know who can say that?

Okay. I grew up in a poor-ish, rigid, religious, authoritarian home. Dad is an alcoholic, which was not talked about. I am the oldest of five. Mom stayed home to raise the kids. I was a very unhappy, anxious child. I was expected to be perfect, and do it without praise or encouragement. Even though I’ve been out of the house for 22 years, I am having a hard time forgiving/dealing with/not dwelling on/finding fault with the way I was raised.

I don’t really know if the particulars matter too much, but in case they do, here are the things that keep popping up in my head.

1. After age 12 I was responsible for all my own expenses. Got a job at 15 and have been working ever since, put myself through a bachelor’s degree program, working multiple jobs all through college and afterwards until all my student loans were paid. I worked fulltime over spring break, Christmas break, and had two fulltime jobs every summer. Parents contributed no financial support.

I was severely bulimic for five years, age 18-22. But I graduated with a 3.6 GPA. Because bulimia is so isolating, I really didn’t make any friends in college. It was a very harrowing time. At about age 21 I finally realized I needed help and started counseling and anti-depressants. I paid for it with loan money.

2. Mom never initiated any conversations with me about: buying me a bra, menstruation, sex, birth control, or annual exams. I could not afford tampons and used toilet paper for pads. She never asked me if I had started menstruating, if I needed supplies, if I had cramps, et cetera. Even after my swimming coach sent me home (against my wishes!) from practice with instructions to have my parents drive me to the ER! Cramps were that bad. Doctor said it was menstrual pain, Mom drove me home and that was it.

When I was in my mid-teens I took myself to a clinic and got myself annual exams and birth control pills. I paid.

3. I swam for 10 years. The pool was across the street from my house! Guess how many times either of my parents come over to see me swim. Yep. Zero.

4. I took two AP tests in high school and got a 5 and a 3. Guess how happy they were. Right. Nothing.

5. After about age 11 I stopped having friends over. According to my mother, Karla was built like a German peasant, Barbara should only be allowed to eat dry toast, Wendy was stocky, and Cari had big hips. She would tell me this after they had left. Sars, I loved my friends and it crushed me to hear her only notice how much they weighed — and it was always too much. She was not interested in getting to know them as people.

6. When I was 17 she read my personal correspondence and found out I was on birth control. She wrote me a letter telling me birth control pills are not effective at preventing pregnancy. Not only was I shocked at her snooping, but she didn’t even have correct information. I was insulted that she would assume I was that stupid.

7. I moved in with my boyfriend after college. She didn’t speak to me for six months. We got married at 25. We went to tell my parents and when I said we were not getting married in the Catholic church, my mom got up and left the room. And never came back.

Growing up I was not close to any of my siblings. I felt very isolated from my family. Now we live in different states. I get along with everyone just fine, but am not super-close to any of them. I live in the same town (about 30 minutes away) as my parents. As an adult my relationship with my mother is infrequent, civil, and superficial. I really don’t like spending time around her so I don’t. The way I was raised was not an atmosphere that fostered trust or intimacy. I realize this makes me sound like a terrible person. My mother has even said to me, “You always were a cold, unloving child!”

She tries to greet me with a big fake smile and a hug now but I feel nothing. Maybe she is trying to change. Sars, I needed those hugs and smiles when I was small. I needed someone to be on my side then. Slowly, through my teens and college years, despite the bulimia, the poverty, debt and the isolation I found the things I needed from my home life –- from other people. I found other people who were on my side! I guess I made myself a new family. And I like it a lot.

You know, that was not cathartic. In fact it leaves me feeling baffled and peeved. What do I still need? How can I let go, move on and not dwell on this? Do I need a stranger to validate that my life sucked? We both know people who have had it much worse than this! Or who have been beaten down in the struggle, or who are bitter. Your thoughts please.

Signed,
Stuck

Dear Stuck,

Therapy would help with this, I think, and you’ll want to go in to the first session and stress to your therapist that what you want to do is to deal with your feelings about your childhood, and move on.

This sounds like a simple thing to do, but it isn’t.It’s easy to say, well, it’s in the past, nothing to be done about it now, but to feel it — to really come to a peaceful place with it where it doesn’t bleed into everything in your current life — is much harder, because even good parents screw up, make mistakes, have dumb ideas, do things entirely inadvertently that we never forgive them for, but what good and crappy parents all have in common is that they’re the biggest, most influential figures in our lives for many years, and that, when we look to them for love, support, information, whatever, and we don’t get it?We don’t assume that it’s a shortcoming of theirs, or that they’re just having bad days, or whatever, because we’re kids.We don’t have any perspective on them as flawed human beings; we only see them as monolithic Parent Figures, and if they’re not doing a very good job, we usually ascribe that to something we did wrong, because it’s the only way we have, as children, to explain it.

When we get older, of course, we see things more from their point of view, or we see things in a more nuanced way, and we forgive them or we distance ourselves from them, whatever we need to do.But again, it’s very difficult to come to a point with parents like yours where you can leave that baggage in the road, because it’s been so tied up with your sense of self for so long.And it’s easier to do with the help of a professional, because the sad fact is, you can’t go back and do it over.You can’t take away the pain that’s already been caused.You probably can’t get a cinematic moment of shameful revelation out of your parents, either; they are who they are, and people don’t change, and it’s generally a waste of time to try to get amends made in situations like this when what you really need to do is make amends to yourself — forgive yourself for dwelling on it, dwell on it as long as you need to to learn from it, and then give yourself permission to stop.

Your parents were, at best, clueless.That sucks, and it was completely unfair to you, but it was not your fault and it cannot be changed.What you want to do now is to find a way to prevent the past from making you unhappy in the present; all you can control is your own behavior, and yourself, and if that means cutting off contact with your parents, fine.If that means forgiving them because they really didn’t know any better — although they should have — that’s fine too.But you can only do that once you figure out how to let go of this stuff, and once you’ve let go of it for yourself — not because it makes you the bigger person, not because your parents aren’t trying to hear about it, but because you finally get tired, realize there’s no reason to drag it around anymore, and put it down.

Somebody’s always going to have worse problems than yours; it doesn’t mean yours don’t count.It means you’re lucky in some ways, unlucky in others, and need some help sorting out the boundaries.

Sars,

I suppose you’re lucky that you don’t have annual holiday office parties to attend.Unless you do, in which case, I send my sympathies.

The past two years, our office parties were held at country clubs that are in the same vicinity as our actual office, which makes it easier to attend.However, this year our office party is being held in a downtown area that is not only farther away but hard to get to on a Friday night, what with DC metro rush hour traffic.In addition, I have a horde of other committments going on the same weekend, as does Husband, and neither of us really wants to go out of our way to sit in traffic to attend a party that neither of us wants to go to anyway.And that’s one less Friday night for Christmas shopping and cookie-baking.Besides, the party always ends up feeling like the high school cafeteria where everyone sat with their own clique, and who really wants to dress up and sit in traffic for that?

If I don’t go, would it be career suicide?The office hands out Christmas bonuses the same day so part of me feels like I’m obligated to go, since they just gave me a nice fat check. But this year I don’t want to — in addition to not wanting to waste a Friday night, my boss has been annoying me lately and I’m not really looking forward to having to make polite small talk with him over some dinner with a fancy name I can’t pronounce.(I would, however, attend an office party like you always see in the movies, where everyone gets sloshed in the office and ends up photocopying their butts or making out in the supply closet — at least I’d be drunk.)

What should I do?

Sign me,
Scrooged

Dear Scrooged,

I have no idea if it’s career suicide; you haven’t really given me enough information.Is everyone else in the office going?Are you expected to put this holiday commitment first?I have no sense of how noticeable your absence would be, how highly ranked you are at the company, any of the things that might help me answer that question.

So, if you feel like you have to go or you’ll get in dutch with your boss, or your co-workers?You’d better go.It’s a pain, but it’s a preventive measure.If you don’t feel that way — if it would be mildly awkward, but not for long and not enough to motivate you to put on a party dress — then don’t go.Decline, citing another commitment, smile regretfully, and don’t elaborate.It’s the holidays, people get busy, whatever; make a command decision to let people draw their own conclusions, because that’s the price of not showing up.

[12/14/06]

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