My mother is driving me insane. I knew this would happen, but I was hoping I could last at least a week. No such luck. Now my mother is an incredibly good person. She was a great mother, at least while we were little. I have always felt loved, supported. Mom has always set a good example by trying to practice what she preaches. She teaches Sunday School, works at a nonprofit, donates lots of money to various charities, recycles (which hasn't always been all that easy in our little town in Ohio), serves on executive boards for different charitable organizations. In short, she's kind of a saint. But that doesn't make her any easier to live with.

First, she talks. Constantly. Now my dad and I are the kind of people who enjoy silence. It's not that we hate talking, but we only talk when we have something to say. My mother talks because she cannot handle silence. It makes her crazy. What does she talk about? Absolutely anything. She retells stories over and over. She will tell you minute little details of her day that you couldn't possibly care about. At some point Dad and I just stop responding. Instead of discouraging her, she just talks more and louder to fill the void.

All of this is bad. What's really awful though is the questions. Mom cannot accept that there are things she doesn't need to know. (Or probably doesn't want to know). If I'm sitting at my computer, Mom will ask what I'm doing. She will want to know where I am at any given moment if not at home. If I tell a story about a friend she must know the name and biographical details of that friend. The worst is sports. Mom has recently become a HUGE sports fan. I think it happened when my brother and I both left home, and she need something to fill the time. Mom knows more about the Indians than any other person I've ever met. She watches all the games, listens to sports talk shows, reads stories in the paper. She's always been a Browns fan, but now she's a crazy LeBron/Cavs fan too. Dad used to go downstairs and watch sports as a refuge, but now she's down there watching every game with him. The problem is that Mom has NO short-term memory. She makes herself crazy doing a million things at once, but as a result she is incapable of focusing on any one thing. So when she asks a question, we all know full well that she won't remember the answer five seconds later. Most of the time she won't even remember asking the question. While this drives us all crazy in the rest of life, it's especially frustrating when watching a game, and it means that while Mom has watched sports her whole life, there are times when she doesn't understand some very basic concepts of the game.

All of this makes me sad for a few reasons. One, I LOVE my mother. I really respect her as mother, as all-around good person. But I have a lot of trouble liking her. As long as we're a time zone or two apart it's fine, but living in the same house is definitely impossible. Two, I remember a time when my mom wasn't quite this flighty. The woman's IQ is higher than mine, she graduated summa cum laude, with honors, from Kent. And yet, she has serious problems following the plot of a simple movie now (in large part b/c she refuses to sit still or do just one thing at a time). Third, I'm afraid I'm a lot like her. Now to most people I probably resemble my father more than my mother, but at times I am frighteningly like my mother. I, too, have difficulty doing just one thing. In grad school, I often caught myself reading, watching TV, and eating lunch at the same time. Was I giving much of my attention to any of those? No, of course not. There are times when I watch those commercials that explain what life is like for people with ADD and I wonder if I'm one of them. Like my mom, I just have so many thoughts going through my head at any one time that it's sometimes difficult to focus, to figure out what's most important.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to "cure" my mother or how she would react if I suggested she go to a doctor for ADD. I think she knows she has something like it. And she certainly knows that she isn't very happy. But I don't think she likes to show weakness in front of my father and me because we don't like admitting weaknesses in ourselves. So I'm not sure what the solution is here. Maybe there's not anything wrong with her at all. Maybe it is simply a case of personality clash. My brother is a lot like my Mom in the always-talking sense, though he is much better able to focus. So maybe it doesn't bother him as much as it does me and dad. Maybe the "solution" is that my parents shouldn't live together. Anyone who's know me for a while knows that I believed my parents would divorce as soon as my brother left for college. Why they haven't is a complete mystery to me. Anyway, I can't divorce my mom and wouldn't want to, so I need to figure out some way to make this situation more bearable. I don't want to not come home to visit, so I need to find a way to make this work.