You'd think that by the time someone reaches their late thirties, they'd have mastered certain basic life skills. Opening a gate, washing their hands, eating an olive without swallowing the pit. Nothing terribly complicated, right?
Well, apparently, in my household, these activities still require parental supervision.
Yesterday was one of those days when my mother's anxiety, overprotectiveness, and tendency to explain absolutely everything came together in ways that left me wondering whether I should laugh, scream, or start taking notes.
I chose the last option. After all, I have a blog now.
The Security Gate Apparently Requires Special Training
We were getting ready to leave for the bank. All three of us, naturally, because my mother is uncomfortable staying home alone and equally uncomfortable allowing my younger sister to go places without her.
Never mind that my sister is 37 years old. An ordinary trip to the bank somehow becomes a family outing.
Just before we left, my mother warned my sister not to touch the security gate outside our building.
My sister, quite reasonably, wanted to know how she was supposed to leave the building without touching the gate. Someone has to open it, after all.
That's when my mother explained that she'd open it herself because the gate was full of germs.
Fair enough. Public surfaces aren't exactly sterile. But her explanation didn't end there.
According to my mother, she's the only one who knows how to wash her hands properly. That means plenty of hot water and soap, washing all the way up to her elbows.
Apparently, the rest of us haven't quite mastered the art of personal hygiene.
I couldn't help wondering how opening a gate had become such a specialized operation. If someone else touches it, they can wash their hands afterward. But in my mother's mind, the safest arrangement seems to be that she handles the gate because only she can be trusted to clean herself properly.
It's a small incident, but it's also a familiar pattern. What begins as an ordinary precaution becomes a rule that everyone else is expected to follow.
And the person establishing the rule is usually convinced she's simply protecting us.
Then Came the Dangerous Olives
Later that evening, we were having dinner when my mother issued another warning to my sister.
This time, the potential hazard was an olive.
Not an unfamiliar food or anything particularly exotic. Just an ordinary olive with a pit inside.
My mother felt compelled to explain that olive pits are hard and sharp and that my sister should be careful not to swallow one.
Now, I could understand giving that warning to a small child eating olives for the first time. But my sister is a grown woman who's been eating olives for years. She's perfectly capable of recognizing that there's a pit inside and removing it.
So I said something.
I reminded my mother that my sister was old enough to eat olives safely without being warned about the dangers every time.
Naturally, this led to an explanation.
My mother began telling us how, in the country where she grew up, people were accustomed to eating olives with pits and oranges with seeds. In America, she explained, we're used to pitted olives and seedless fruit, so people might not expect to encounter a pit or seed.
I understood what she was trying to say. Food habits vary, and someone unfamiliar with a particular food might benefit from a warning.
But we weren't discussing someone who'd never eaten an olive before. We were discussing my sister, who has had plenty of experience eating them.
A simple concern had turned into a lengthy discussion about fruit, cultural differences, and the hazards of swallowing things that aren't meant to be swallowed.
And somehow, we still hadn't settled the question of whether my adult sister could be trusted to eat dinner without instructions.
She Trusts My Sister Completely. Except, Apparently, She Doesn't.
Here's where the conversation became especially interesting.
I told my mother that she could trust my sister's judgment. She's an adult, and she knows how to eat an olive without swallowing the pit.
My mother immediately insisted that she trusts my sister completely.
Wonderful! I thought we were finally getting somewhere.
But then she explained that I'd done plenty of stupid things when I was younger, and that was why she needed to remind my sister not to swallow olive pits.
I had to think about that one.
What do my youthful mistakes have to do with my sister's ability to eat an olive?
Apparently, my past decisions are now evidence that another adult in the family requires ongoing safety instructions.
It's the kind of reasoning I've encountered throughout my life. I'll make a perfectly reasonable observation, and rather than addressing it directly, my mother will launch into an explanation involving something from years ago.
Sometimes the explanation has very little connection to the original subject. Other times, as in this case, it somehow turns into criticism of me.
And before I know it, we're no longer talking about the actual problem.
We're talking about everything except the problem.
When Does Protectiveness Become Overprotectiveness?
I know my mother loves us and worries about our safety. I'm not questioning that.
She's always been an anxious person, and I've watched her check and recheck doors, windows, faucets, and appliances for as long as I can remember. She's uncomfortable being alone, worries about things that might happen, and frequently feels the need to remind us about ordinary precautions.
I can understand why a person who's spent much of her life feeling afraid might be especially concerned about safety.
But I also wonder what happens when those concerns begin interfering with other people's independence.
There's a difference between saying, "Be careful, that olive has a pit," and treating an adult as though she's incapable of recognizing an ordinary hazard.
There's also a difference between preferring to open a gate yourself and suggesting that nobody else knows how to wash their hands properly.
The individual incidents sound almost comical when you describe them. A security gate. An olive pit. A lecture about seeds.
But when these interactions happen regularly, they become part of a larger family dynamic in which one person's fears influence everyone else's behavior.
That's something I want to explore further in our Anxiety, Fear & Compulsive Behaviors section.
I'm curious about whether some of my mother's constant warnings are expressions of anxiety, habits developed over a lifetime, or her way of trying to maintain some sense of control. I don't know which explanation fits, and there may be more than one.
What I do know is that the constant warnings and explanations can become exhausting for the people receiving them.
My Sister's Independence Is More Complicated Than It Looks
I also can't discuss these incidents without acknowledging the complicated relationship between my mother, my sister, and me.
My sister and I didn't grow up with a typical sibling relationship. I'm considerably older, and I took on many caregiving responsibilities when she was young. In some ways, I became another parental figure before I fully understood what that meant.
Those roles followed us into adulthood.
My mother continues to be extremely protective of my sister, sometimes to the point where ordinary activities become difficult. My sister has her own struggles with anxiety and independence, and I can't pretend our family history hasn't influenced the way we relate to one another.
Meanwhile, I've spent so many years managing household responsibilities that I frequently find myself trying to explain to my mother why my sister should be allowed to make ordinary decisions for herself.
Which is rather ironic, when you think about it.
I'm trying to encourage my mother to treat my sister like an adult, while still occupying a role that resembles another parent.
Perhaps that's part of the problem, too.
Families don't always recognize when the roles established decades earlier are no longer appropriate. Sometimes everyone continues behaving according to expectations that developed when the children really were children.
And sometimes the person trying to change those patterns is still participating in them without realizing it.
These are the kinds of questions I want to examine in our Family Dynamics & Childhood Experiences section.
Why a Simple Conversation Becomes So Exhausting
The olive incident also illustrates something I've struggled with for years: my mother's tendency to turn simple observations into lengthy explanations.
I wasn't asking for a history of fruit consumption. I was suggesting that my sister could safely eat an olive.
But instead of responding to that point, my mother began explaining why certain foods contain pits, how people ate them in her country, and why American eating habits might make them dangerous.
Then, when I tried to bring the conversation back to my sister's judgment, the explanation somehow became a criticism of my own behavior when I was younger.
This is one of the reasons I became interested in compulsive talking and repetitive communication.
It's not simply the amount of talking that wears me down. It's the feeling that every little conversation has the potential to become unnecessarily complicated.
Sometimes I'd like to express a thought, hear a response, and move on with my day.
Instead, I find myself caught in discussions that seem to take on a life of their own.
And when these conversations happen repeatedly throughout the day, the cumulative frustration can be difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.
One conversation about olive pits is harmless enough. Dozens of similarly drawn-out interactions, day after day, can leave you feeling as though you never get a moment to think.
The Difference Between Loving Someone and Trusting Them
What stayed with me after yesterday wasn't really the gate or the olives.
It was my mother's insistence that she trusts my sister completely while continuing to warn her about things most adults handle without assistance.
I don't doubt that she believes what she's saying. Perhaps, in her mind, being protective and being trusting aren't contradictory at all.
But from where I'm sitting, trust involves allowing another person to exercise judgment, make ordinary decisions, and occasionally make mistakes without constant supervision.
And that's where our family seems to struggle.
My mother sees precautions and protection. I see an adult woman who needs opportunities to develop and exercise her independence.
Neither perspective requires us to believe the other person is deliberately trying to cause harm.
But we can't keep treating every ordinary activity as a potential disaster, either.
I'm still trying to understand how much of my mother's behavior comes from fear, how much comes from lifelong habit, and how much reflects family roles that have never really changed.
In the meantime, I suspect there will be plenty more incidents like yesterday's.
After all, we've already established that opening a gate requires specialized handwashing skills and eating an olive comes with its own safety briefing.
I can only imagine what will happen the next time we encounter a watermelon with seeds.
Welcome to another ordinary day in my not-so-ordinary household.
