gs_silva

Christine lies on her dorm room bed talking on the phone with a book

"Mom, I'm doing GREAT," Christine says into the phone. "Well, yes, it's hard. it's med school. But-"

Her mother interrupts her.

She continues. "Boys? No. I'm too busy."

"I'm not actively dating Ren right now."

"BECAUSE I'M IN MED SC-"

"I don't CARE what Pastor Dobson says."

"Okay, fine. Happy Mother's Day, Mom."

I portray a variety of mother/child relationships in Alien Romance.
Cathy's mother is an intellectual in the Lyon fine arts community and raised her like a little adult, steeping her in culture, but was stymied by Cathy's behavioral and educational struggles and the general chaos by which Cathy lives her life. They're pretty close but have that difference as a chasm between them, and now, living on two different continents at a time when international communication was quite difficult, rarely speak anymore. Cathy is in an endless cycle of resenting and forgiving her mother when they do talk.

Ren, being the youngest by far of six kids, has a mixed relationship with his mother - she was gentlest with him of all her children, but she's also much older and has been a grandmother for years now. She's profoundly proud of him for pursuing a medical career, but she doesn't have a lot of tangible support to offer, and she's very socially conservative so she pushes him to be a Man's Man even when he's not interested. Sig, her only other son, was a deep disappointment, and she takes her grief out on Ren in many small ways.

Maurice and his Má are very close. He was born right as she was arriving in the US, and she was totally dependent on her new husband and his family of Russian immigrants, and it didn't go well for her at first, so she clung to the baby as her lifeline for the first few years of his life. She influenced the way he acquired language, teaching him Vietnamese so she'd have someone to talk to, and then she let it slide as her English improved, so he remembers hardly any now. Running a grocery store framed their relationship - she's been his boss as well as his mother, and they both serve the big boss, Maurice's father, who is emotionally distant and firmly demanding.

Ella and Jon's mother, Lindsey, was a Sports Mom to the extreme for many years, focusing so intently on Jon's performance that she actively demanded little Ella take a back seat to all his wants and opportunities. She tried to set the siblings against each other as a way to exert control, which backfired - when Jon noticed (when he was about 8 and Ella was 5), he turned the tables on her. It was kids against parents, an all-out war, and he leveraged his sports participation against Mom and Dad so they could never win this war. As a result, Ella and Jon have the kind of sibling bond that usually comes out of abusive households. When Lindsey divorced her husband, she was so exhausted and alienated that she moved across the country and started a cult with her new boyfriend, and they haven't heard from her in a couple of years.

Christine's mother pressured her to be a good little girl and groomed her to be wife material. But Christine was too tall, too loud, and when she discovered her love of science (a subject not popular in the Holmes household), she started planning her escape. Christine's sister Susan broke their mother by living what Mrs. Holmes would consider a sinful lifestyle - she married Linda, a much older woman. (It was only the 80's, but they do have a marriage license, because one of them was AMAB.) In spite of this, Susan turned out to be the 'good' child, staying nearby and cultivating a relationship with their mother while Christine jets off to pursue her goals without their parents' approval.

It's fun to invent familial relationships that aren't the usual tropes you see in fiction. I've actually, just reading self-published or pre-published fiction written by friends, seen a lot of portrayals that loyally followed the tropes. Not sure why. Real life isn't like that. Each and every one of you, dear readers, can describe your real life situations that subvert tired tropes. You are my inspirations. I love you all and hope you have a good day each in your own way.