• Home
• /
• Opinion

How to keep your cool when parents get on your nerves

Deep breaths, deep breaths. Relax, I told myself. Patience. Two messages in a day is not such a big deal.

Close to 4pm, my mother sent me a text for the second time in the day. She had already asked me the same thing in the morning.
A package for me that she had sent landed in Dubai with a Family Friend Type.
Her first message at 10.41 am: "Have you called up for the stuff?" Me: "Will, today."
Half a day lapses. Topics are changed. She tells me about what an ordeal it was to change metro lines getting to Noida and how a ticket got lost, etc, etc. I sent some laughing emojis.
Another ping at 3.48 pm: "Spoken?"
Me: <silence> (but she would have seen the blue ticks).
Deep breaths, deep breaths. Relax, I told myself. Patience. Two messages in a day is not such a big deal. Stop losing it every time a parent gets on your nerves.
Family Friend Type (who I haven't met) lives in Dubai. I didn't see the mad rush about why I should call at once.
Some childhood traits resurface from time to time - one of which is to not do what I am told to do. Delaying tactics dictate: delay as much, get on parents' nerves, find humour in their exasperation. It's a shame really, how nasty children can be. Well, me anyway.
Mean-spiritedly, I also wanted to convey to my mother, stop messaging for silly things in the middle of the workday. It doesn't matter if all I am doing is listening to criticism of Anne Hathaway's speech calling out white privilege (a speech that someone called 'virtue signaling', thus teaching me a new phrase), or replying to some work email or reading an article that examines whether millennials are quicker to adapt to new technology than tenured folks.
The constant pinging is just tiresome. Those forwards - don't get me started - are bad enough. I don't understand, if people find something funny, why must they share it? I don't. On the family group, I never respond to the silly jokes. But if it's something original (however lame), I am the first to reply.
I have to be nice to my mother, I thought to myself, and grow up. I know what's in the package. I know she just wants me to be proactive, establish point of contact, retrieve it soon.
So, given all that I know, I was unnecessarily allowing a blood vessel to throb in my temple. All I have to do is pick up the damn phone (though, I was thinking text.), say hello, fix a date and time, adhere to it, smile, collect, out. Nothing herculean about it. But the effort it takes to not snap at a parent is ridiculous.
My father has often sung virtues of not reacting. "Why can't you just stay quiet, child?" Former bosses too - "The problem with you is you want to reply immediately." Eternal note to self: feed mental valium to the tempestuousness, keep impulses down. Smile. Say hmm. Let it slide. "Do breathe in and breathe out," as one malnourished yoga teacher used to chirp at 6.30 in the morning.
I didn't reply immediately to my mother. But what force of nature can keep a mother down too long?
Me: silence
Me at 4.30 pm (and after a few deep breaths and progress on a word count on a word document): "Will call after 7. It's a working day. I will tell you when I have spoken."
My mother: <silence>.
For now.
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com