“Fine. My tutor seems super organized. The girl’s tiny, but works like a drill sergeant…She’ll hopefully be able to get me back on track.” I shrug, painting a slightly more optimistic picture of my session.
“Well hopefully this tutor will pull through.” Adam shoves his face with more lasagna.
“This’ll work. I promise.”
Adam nods his head in response without making eye contact with me. “You know we’re all here for you if you needus, right? We can host group study sessions as often as you need them.”
“I appreciate it. I’ll let you know if I need extra support. For now, I’m going to hope this tutor is as much of a miracle worker as they say she is.”
“And she had theaudacityto say that I should have analyzed my data using multilevel modeling, instead of ANOVAs.” Charlotte screams into the phone as if I was the cause of all her problems. Such is the glory of being the middle child. You get to be your older sibling’s punching bag while getting none of the perks of being the youngest. “Can you believe that, Jake?”
What I couldn’t believe was that Charlotte thought I knew the difference between multilevel modeling and ANOVAs, but I’d come to learn when she academically rambled like this, she really just wanted someone to vent to more than anything else.
“Damn that’s wild. I can’t understand why she would say that to you.” Like I literally didn’t understand. We had started to get into some basic statistics in PSYCH101 the past three weeks, not that I had retained much from lectures. Lucky for me, I had spent most of my life learning how to provide a comment here and there that would show I was insightful instead of utterly clueless about whatever the hell my mom and sisters were talking about.
“I. KNOW. It gets worse. After she dumps that little nugget of information on me, she THEN says I should rerunallof my stats, for projects that are already completed, before I have to defend my dissertation. Which, by the way, is in two days. Does she not understand how stressed I already am? Why couldn’t she have just been like ‘Looks great Char, I’m so proud of all you’ve accomplished’?”
“Because she’s Mom. And Mom will compromise on many things but her thoughts when it comes to research isn’t one of them. Why did you even send her your proposal anyway? It’s not like she’s your advisor or even on your dissertation committee.”
Deep down I knew the answer. No matter how much me and my siblings wanted to and tried to deny it, we all wanted our mother’s approval more than anything. Even though she was one of the most supportive moms out there, we always felt like we had to prove ourselves to her. Just the aura world renowned neuroscientist Katherine Fisher has when you’re in the room with her makes you feel unworthy. Even as her children.
“Because even though I’m nearly 30 I still crave some validation from her. It’s the price you pay to be an academic. You give away your best years hoping a few people will give your work enough praise and support to keep you going for the foreseeable future while you continue to seek that same validation. Rinse and repeat. Unfortunately, one of the most prominent researchers in my field also happens to be my mom. So that just comes with its own extra fun baggage.”
“I bet your therapy sessions are super fun.”
That manages to get a laugh out of her. “Oh you have nooo idea.”
“I can’t judge, mine wouldn’t be any better.” If anything, they’d probably be worse. At least Charlotte understood what mom was doing and knew enough that they could argue about it. I could barely even keep up when it came to the basics.
“Well if you ever want to talk to Cheryl, let me know. She’s been a real rock these last few years.”
“I’ll keep you posted.” Given how it was hard enough already for me to talk about my academic problems with mybest friend, I didn’t see me opening up about other insecurities to a complete stranger.
“So how are things going with the team? Sienna and I did a little watch party last weekend and streamed your last game against Quinnipiac. Nice goal by the way.”
It was moments like these where I felt a bit silly for being insecure about being the only nonacademic in my family. Both of my sisters kept up with my season, which included streaming my away games together on the weekends.
“Yeah we had a rough start, but I think things are slowly starting to mesh. We have a new assistant coach too, Mason Hayes. He used to play for Westchester before going to the NHL. And now he’s back.” No one really talked about Mason’s early retirement due to a rough history of concussions during his time in the pros. It was clearly still a sore subject for him.
“How exciting. I bet you’ve already picked his brain about your pending NHL contract.”
That had been the plan initially, until the only thing Mason wanted to talk to me about was how I planned on fixing my grades so I wouldn’t get benched for the rest of the season. My odds of getting an NHL contract were solid up until the threat of being benched. Hard to convince teams you’re not a liability when you’re not getting any ice time. “Yeah, I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I definitely will soon.”
“Well keep me posted on any updates. I want to be the first to know when my baby brother makes it to the big leagues.”
“Ah still upset that I told Sienna about signing with Westchester before I told you, huh?” I snicker.
“I just don’t understand why you would choose to tell her before you told your older sister. Who — in case you forgot — made sure you were fed, clothed, and bathed when mom was finishing up her dissertation and dad was too busymanaging a newborn. A little appreciation would have been nice,” she teases.
“Hmm maybe I blocked that out because I was still scarred from when you would make me wear princess dresses and play tea time.”
“I plead the fifth…and also need to go figure out what the hell to do with my proposal.” Charlotte groans and I can feel her irritation through the phone. “Wish me luck.”
“Don’t overthink it, and don’t let mom get in your head. You got this Char.”
“Thanks Jake. Love you. Let me know if you need anything.”
She hangs up before I get the courage to ask her for help with my psychology homework, which is probably for the best. As badly as I didn’t want to mess up on another assignment, the idea of her knowing I was struggling with the one thing that connected my mom and sisters the most felt even worse.
