04/05/2010 12:00 am
Life
'I'm So Not Like My Mother,' by Jerramy Fine
The author of a hilarious new memoir reveals the universe's plan for her to be raised by hippies.
From a very early age, I was convinced that I’d been switched at birth – that the day I was born, a certain Denver hospital mixed up two expectant mothers: a young aristocrat from England, and an ultra-liberal hippie from America. And somehow my infant self ended up in the hippie farmhouse/tepee complex in rural Colorado instead of the elegant, stately manor house in the English countryside.
How else can you explain it? This crazy bohemian woman I called "Mom" wore long, tie-dyed skirts, embroidered peasant blouses and didn’t own a single bra, while I insisted on prim pleated skirts and cashmere cardigans. While Mom grooved to Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, I listened to orchestra music from Queen’s coronation on my Fisher Price record player. Mom made tofu for dinner (red meat, white flour and refined sugar were strictly prohibited) and my chores involved cleaning the chicken coop and the goat pen. I escaped the hippie mayhem by devouring Jane Austen novels, and I swallowed my soybean-based meals while dreaming of English tea and sugary scones.
Picture a more intense version of "Meet the Fockers," with me as Ben Stiller. (OK, Ben Stiller plus Rapunzel: As this picture shows, Mom and I did share a serious need for good conditioner.)
Mom hoped I’d join the Peace Corps, whereas I begged to be sent to British boarding school and told her I planned on marrying a prince. I never outgrew my patrician, princessy ideas and this exasperated her and the egalitarian, meritocratic values she’d embraced so tightly in the 1960s. Once she said to me, "Jerramy, the best thing that could happen to you would be for you to fall in love with a homeless man. That’s what you need to bring you back down to earth." She didn’t understand that my royal goals weren’t grandiose and superficial just for the sake of it. Rather they were based on a real and genuine desire for order (which was severely lacking in my home), formality and tradition, all of which are good things. Why couldn’t she see that?
Mom embarrassed me constantly just by being herself. I desperately wanted a normal mother – mothers like my friends had. A mother with regular haircuts, a house in the suburbs and a shiny car. (I actually think there should be a support group for people whose parents drive a school bus; see photo below.) But Mom made no effort to ease my pre-teen embarrassment. Conforming to the status quo was not her style and she actually seemed to enjoy provoking me with her eccentricity.
As I grew older, she and I fought constantly (at high volume) about everything. (Given her staunch feminism, televised beauty pageants were banned in our house and one of our biggest fights occurred the day I entered Miss Teen Colorado without telling her.) No matter how hard we tried to get along, she represented the opposite of everything I felt life should be and I represented everything that her generation had fought so strongly against.
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