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September 1993 – A Tight Grip
When I came to the Midwest, a lot of things in my life change. The food change, the scenery changed, even the language changed. All of which is normal fare when you move to a different country. However, one other thing changed, something which I didn't expect. This thing, my Mother. In moving from Japan to the US, she changed from being the world's least attentive mother, to being the world's most controlling mother. In Kyoto, my Mother didn't care about any part of my life beyond the part that involved reading my report card. I went out early in the morning and came back late at night, and she neither new nor cared where I'd been in the mean time just so long as part of it included my school. It was that simple. It was the same with my sister. My Mother simply thrust Lucy into my care and got in with her own life. If I hadn't arrange for somebody to look after Lucy while I was at school, or while I was practicing in the Dojo, nobody else would have. The same went for changing, washing and feeding my sister. I either did it myself, or I arranged for somebody else to do it, because my Mother wanted no part of it. This all changed when we reached the Midwest. Almost overnight my Mother went from being totally hands off, to being totally and utterly controlling. Madness Within a week or so our arrival, about the time that it took to get the lay of the land, the high level of autonomy that I had previously enjoyed evaporated completely. Instead be replaced by a strict schedule that my Mother had chosen for me. A schedule which dictated my life right down to the minute. My Mother decided when I got up in the morning, what I ate for breakfast, and what clothes I wore to school. After school, I did activities that she's arranged, or otherwise went places that she told me to go until she arrived in the evening to collect me. Then came “family time”, which was largely a euphemism in our household that meant the time when our Mother had direct control over Lucy and myself. With control being the operative word. By decree, every single thing that happened in the home happened on her say so, and every decision that was made was made by her alone. We were made to act like British Victorian children. Presenting ourselves to her for inspection before meals, and having to ask permission to do even the simplest of things. I'm not joking, we literally had to ask her to go to the bathroom and to let the telephone ring until she gave us permission to answer it, and there was no arguing over who had the remote control, because my Mother had already dictated what we were going to watch in advance. It was pure control freak insanity. Once family time was over, she dictated when we were allowed to go to sleep. Which was almost always the time that she retired for the night, about 11-11:30 at night. Which was draining for me, but was murderously exhausting for my baby sister, and resulted in her constantly falling asleep throughout the day for years to come. Even when we were away from our Mother, at school or in the time after school and her returning, we weren't free because she took it upon herself to vet our friends. She deciding which ones were not suitable companions for us, and which were. Co-conspirators Given that my Mother was absent from dusk till dawn, it might well be easy to ask how total her grip could be. After all, once she left for work, how could she make sure that we were actually leading the lives that she had set out for us? Well, the answer was simple. She had wasn't alone. My Mother had a rather nasty talent for convincing people that what she was doing was in our best interests. Something which she accomplished by latching on to the two biggest local prejudices, and using them to her advantage. With the Locals, she quickly honed on their deep seated suspicions of outside influences and interference and used it to convince a significant number them (mostly the most conservative) that anybody who spoke out against her was interfering in her family, and thus had to be stepped on lest the start interfering in other people's families, too. With the Weekend Men, she played on their innate fear of “bad influences”. Convincing them that she was protecting her family by controlling our lives in much the same way that they thought that they were protecting their families by uprooting them from the suburbs and moving them out to the middle of nowhere (most of the Weekend men families moved to the Midwest specifically because they feared that unspecified bad influences in the suburbs might murder their children as they slept. Or, worse, make them into gays, liberals, communists, and so on). Owing to this, if Lucy or I broke from our schedule, played with friends that she deemed unsuitable, or otherwise disobeyed her when she was out of earshot, there would often be somebody willing to snitch on us to our mother for doing so. Or to make our lives difficult in an untold number of other ways. Of course, our Mother's regiment had nothing whatsoever to do with out best interest, and everything to do with ingraining so much instinctive obedience in us that we wouldn't dare disobey her while she was working her long hours. For the most part, it worked. The Impact Having already experience a high level of independence during my former life in Kyoto, I wasn't exactly please about my new routine, but I'd had obedience bred into me from a very young age through my schooling, my martial arts training, and through the influence of my traditional Japanese grandfather. So, I pretty much went along with her orders on autopilot at the start. After that, she used my disciplined upbringing against me at every turn, and ground me down through physical routine and emotional blackmail until I couldn't stand up to her at all. I had my little rebellions when she was not in the immediate vicinity, and I resolutely refused to give up my Japanese sense of identity, but that was about all I could manage. It would be a long long time before I would have the strength to defy her with anything more than stubbornness and a cold stare. Lucy on the other hand was even more affected than I was because she had not really old enough to known any other way of life. If my Mother told her to stay in her room, Lucy would simply stay in her room until she was told to come out, and if she told her to go straight to the library after school and not to play her friends, then Lucy would simply do it without complaint of question. For my sister, obedience simply became a way of surviving. |
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