Mum’s 90, French and finds gratitude demeaning … can family therapy help?
Convincing an elderly parent to appreciate the art of giving thanks takes work – and self-reflection.
By Caroline Baum
We hoped a new horizon and our care might soften Mum’s abrasive manner and dilute her vinegary nature. Instead, her mood darkened in a self-absorbed cocktail of loneliness and anxiety. Credit: Bea Crespo/illustrationroom.com.au
I belong to the gratitude generation. Brought up on a diet of wellbeing mantras that emphasise the importance of recognising and giving thanks, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant the cause. True believers follow the daily practice of writing anything and everything that makes them feel grateful in a notebook or on strips of paper dropped into a vessel specifically designated as a gratitude jar, its contents to be reviewed at the end of the year in a thankfulness audit.
Every spiritual and mental-health guru, every pop psychologist and wellbeing influencer preaches gratitude as the cornerstone of a better attitude to life,
especially for those struggling with depression. Gratitude turns our focus outward, reminds us that there are blessings to be found everywhere: a ripe peach, a glowing sunset, a kind gesture. It all counts.
When my mother came to live with me and my husband six years ago, the atmosphere in our house became tense and toxic, strained and sour. We had imagined that her spirits, bruised by widowhood after eight years watching my father disappear down the tunnel of dementia, would be boosted by her bold decision to move to the other side of the world. We hoped a new horizon and our care might soften her abrasive manner and dilute her vinegary nature. Instead, her mood darkened in a self-absorbed cocktail of loneliness and anxiety.
At crisis point, we decided radical intervention was necessary. Would she, I asked, contemplate going to a family therapist with me, in the hope that we could learn how to achieve a more civil harmony? To my surprise, she agreed to a limited number of sessions.
The therapist was intrigued. “You are my first mother-daughter in this age bracket,” she said, congratulating us. At 60 and 90 respectively, we’d left it a little late. I hoped we would not scare her with the depth of our dysfunction.
“What seems to be the trouble?” she asked.
Where to begin? I thought it best to start with something that might be fixable, rather than aiming to shift the big boulders of resentment.
Feeling suddenly petty, I mentioned that my mother never said please or thank you for anything, instead issuing commands as if she were speaking to staff. It became wearing, our servant status magnifying a sense that our only purpose was to satisfy her needs.
Caroline Baum with her mother, Judith, in 2019. “At 60 and 90 respectively, we’d left therapy a little late,” writes Baum. “I hoped we would not scare the therapist with the depth of our dysfunction.”Credit: Courtesy of Caroline Baum
“Is that true, Judith?” asked the therapist.
“Yes,” said my mother, punctuating her defiant honesty with a characteristic French shrug, that national gesture that says so much but is so ambiguous. Like an Indian head wobble which can mean yes, no or I don’t know, the shrug can signify indifference, contempt, passive aggression and so much more. When combined with a pushed-out lower lip, or moue, as it’s known, it achieves supreme eloquence.
“Could you try saying please and thank you to make things a bit easier?” asked the therapist, as if talking to a sulky teen refusing to come out of their room.
“I could,” said my mother, shifting huffily in her seat like an owl fluffing out its feathers to intimidate a predator. “But I wouldn’t mean it. I have never seen the point of gratitude. I find it demeaning.”
I saw the therapist’s Adam’s apple bob in her throat as she swallowed hard. I’m not sure she’d ever heard anyone say that before.
The statement imploded in my head. Up until then, I’d taken for granted that gratitude was the currency of everyday interactions with friends and strangers alike, a lubricant that makes exchanges reciprocal. To imagine never feeling grateful was to imagine a hollow series of mechanical transactions, stripped of humanity.
For the next six weeks or so, my mother was replaced by a petulant adolescent.
“You know what they say: fake it till you make it.” said the therapist, keeping her tone neutral. The expression was unfamiliar to my mother, who’d never followed any form of positive psychology. Phrases like “Because you’re worth it” and “Feel the fear and do it anyway” translate clunkily into French. Far better to stick with homegrown, more pedigreed nostrums such as je pense donc je suis (“I think, therefore I am”, Descartes) and après moi le déluge (“After me, may the floods come”, King Louis XV).
For the next six weeks or so, my mother was replaced by a petulant adolescent. Sticking her hand out at the tip of her nose and wiggling her fingers she would adopt a child’s voice and say, “Pleasethankyoupleasethankyou could I have a glass of wine pleasethankyou?” goading us to react to her provocation. It was tedious, but we held firm. Eventually, she dropped it and said please and thank you normally, although she often forgot, lapsing into her old ways.
My mother did soften during COVID-19, forced by increased vulnerability to recognise that we were providing her with a higher level of care and protection than she could have managed on her own. “I don’t like feeling I owe anybody anything,” she said one day, stiffly, as if making an official proclamation, “but I want you to know I am grateful.” We stored the triumph away, proud of the breakthrough.
It did not last. After the pandemic, when the world opened up and took us away from her more often, depression again became her persistent companion.
“Try a gratitude diary,” I suggested at my most annoyingly Pollyanna-ish, offering her a notebook for the purpose and explaining the concept. She looked sceptical.
A few weeks later, I asked how it was going.
“It doesn’t work,” she said, dismissively.
“Maybe you need to do it for longer to get results,” I replied.
“I can’t think of three things,” she said.
“Try one, then.”
The notebook remained blank (I peeked). Gratitude really was not her thing.
As my peers and I get older, I often hear friends talk about what brought them to where they are now. We’re at that age. I’ve noticed a recurring theme to these conversations – about the sacrifices their parents made for them to have a good education or help them realise a goal.
Such reckonings tended to make me uncomfortable but I could not identify why. My parents had given me every opportunity, raised me in material privilege, taken me travelling, made sure I went to a good school, praised and encouraged me to believe I could do and be anything, helped me buy my first home. But I could not associate the feeling of thankfulness with any of it.
Caroline and Judith five decades earlier. Judith’s traumatic childhood meant that as an adult, “the rituals of giving never held pleasure for her”, Baum writes.Credit: Courtesy of Caroline Baum
One friend told me that his daughter, now enjoying accolades and an international career, had asked him one day what he’d spent on her education. He did a quick calculation and told her. She wrote him a cheque for the full amount on the spot, with an offhand “Thanks Dad”. I found the story moving but unsettling.
Had I ever said that? Had I ever expressed sincere gratitude for the comfortable life I’d led, thanks to my parents? I’d turned up from across the world as a surprise for significant birthdays, but why could I not recall incidents of deeply heartfelt thanks?
I lay awake at night, feeling the secret shame of a stain on my character. It was all the more perplexing because, in my current life, I valued gratitude’s capacity to build trust and longevity into relationships. Gratitude gilds, ingratitude corrodes. One is a balm, the other an acid.
In the formative years when such values are set, my mother had had very little to be grateful for. Orphaned as an infant by murder-suicide, she subsequently lost the grandfather who took care of her, who died in an accident. After that, she was passed around like an unwanted parcel that could not be returned to sender. There was no tenderness in her day to day, and she built a thick carapace to protect herself from the hurt of being unloved. Random acts of kindness in a series of foster homes were always negated by more memorable acts of cruelty and malice. She became wary. By the time my father tried to make up for her sense of abandonment, showering her with material expressions of affection, she was numb to such generosity.
The rituals of giving never held pleasure for her. When I was about to turn 50, we were riding on a London bus together and stopped outside a shoe shop where a pair of red patent loafers gleamed like sleek twin Lamborghinis. I admired them. “Oh well, why don’t you get them for your birthday? That’ll solve that,” she said, as if she’d just dodged a tedious chore.
As a child, I wanted for nothing: I was adored and spoiled. But when adolescence struck, everything became transactional. Good marks brought rewards. Obedience, compliance, discipline bought tiny freedoms and concessions, but these could also be denied or withdrawn on the slightest pretext. My parents gave nothing unconditionally. Unconsciously, I learnt not to trust the giver, that there were always strings attached. When I was older, the blackmail became more overt. Anything offered came with a catch. Knowing it was my favourite car, my father begged me not to move to Australia with the promise of a Mercedes coupe. He genuinely believed I could be bought.
So here we are: two generations of ungrateful women, one loved too little, one loved too much. Luckily, some things are given inadvertently. My
father passed on his love of music and spectacle, of travel, eating out and the satisfaction of good planning. From my mother I got a gift for languages, love of animals, flowers and vibrant colours, her taste for folk arts and cinema. Inherited riches, with no strings attached.
Maybe it is not too late after all. Merci, Maman.
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