Who Do You Think You Are?

I can't remember the last time I used the word "we" in accordance with my mother and I. In this post, I will use it five times.

My mother and I don't get along. Beyond the normal teenager-rebel-versus-mother-who-doesn't-want-to-let-her-baby-go ordeal, there are the added variables of depression, divorce and me being an awful lot like my father, my obviously better logic, and the fully developed case of Asian suffocation syndrome (more commonly referred to by its acronym.)

Trials and tribulations. Toil and trouble. TNT. Mother and Daughter.

I have a distinct memory of feeling connected with her. It happened recently. It has no context, no backstory, it's just a scenario dropped out of space. Made of dust.

We were driving in the car, just the two of us, and the radio was on. It was playing pretty loudly, to fill that iceberg-sized void that is our lack of conversation. This song came on the radio:

It isn't supposed to be possible. If two people aren't talking, it can't possibly get any quieter, but it did. I started singing along, as softly as possible lest she hear me. I usually do that with most songs I listen to. Then she started singing too, and I found I didn't mind her off-key notes as I usually do. We were both just quietly - separately - relating to the song. Except differently, very differently. To her, I imagine the lyrics were a sort of fantasy. It was wishing my father, a person she hadn't even had the strength to love anymore, realized (what she saw as) his greatest mistake: leaving her. To her, this song was him begging to come back and her refusing his plea. Who do you think you are, who do you think you are. For me, I imagined I was reading those harsh words in a letter addressed to me.

When we pulled into our garage, the song still had about a minute left. We just stopped time, didn't rush to get out, begin homework, or mix together some semblance of dinner. We just listened in the half-light, the car slowly being consumed in its own carbon monoxide exhaust.

She has said those words to me before, when she was mad or sad, or whatever euphemism you want to slap onto depression. Who do you think you are! Accusatory words, cold words.

I'm your daughter, I think. I've got the same thing wrong with me that you've got. I'm a good kid. I give you nothing to worry about. I've never come home drunk, stoned, or even past my curfew. I forgive you every time you make my cry. That's who I am.