'This is Eirwen Silcox you're Talking to!' How I disarm my Narcissist Mother.

                                                          'No, you're the fairest...'

I wish I'd known better with my mother's narcissism. What it was, what it led her to do, how she couldn't help it. 

When anyone challenged my mother, she became Dame Nellie Melba. Melba would rearrange the furniture in her hotel rooms; and once moved the furniture around in a hotel foyer. When the management asked her to please cease and desist, she said, ‘I am Melba! But don’t worry, I’m not going to charge you for the improvements.’

Anyone challenging my mother would hear, ‘This is Eirwen Silcox you’re talking to. Senior Medical Secretary.’ 

She might add, with a pitying look, ‘Able to spell choledocholithiasis, borborygmi and sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia, thank you.’

AKA gallstones, rumbly tummy and ice - cream headache. 

You’re welcome. 

And that, she thought, should be the end of it. If anyone persisted in challenging her, she would become louder, nastier, more obscene and even physically violent.

Around the age of thirteen I remember remarking how odd it was that she was PA to a social worker named Mary Peckham and to a psychotherapist called Margaret Clapham. (Two areas of London that are, of course, near to each other.)

She replied, ‘I don’t consider my very important work in these two vital areas of care as odd.’

‘But it is.’

‘This is Eirwen Silcox you’re talking to…’

I knew to stop there, but went on to wonder when she would start moonlighting for Moira Battersea?

She punched me in the side of the head.

She once rang my holiday rental. August. Sunday. 8.15 am. ‘Oh, I’ve caught you before you went out…’

‘Where would anyone be going on a Sunday this early?’ I asked, exasperated. 

‘Oh, I thought you might be going for a walk or a swim or to play tennis — getting some slimming done.’ We’ll get to it. ‘Anyway, I had to ring you to ask about this letter I’ve received at the South Bank.’

Where she had an evening job, booking taxis for concert goers. ‘Only going from the South Bank, mind,’ she would clarify, ‘they can sort their own getting to.’

In fact, the from was never guaranteed. She would advise on tube and bus routes — ‘Made of money, are we?’ — and once asked a patron what was wrong with his god given legs? ‘Your hotel is just over the foot bridge. The Lord will take away, remember. My mother’s neighbour, now, Letty — she’d lapsed into going the two streets away to the paper shop on the bus and back. And the Lord decided that as Letty wasn’t using her legs, he’d cause her to have that fall that nearly ended her up in a wheelchair for Easter.’

She could proudly note down that night under Taxis Booked: No taxi for Clifton-Barnes after Beethoven’s Choral. Another Little Victory.

Anyway, this most urgent letter. ‘It’s from Katrina. Hungarian. From Hungary. A student. She studies. Because of course you know I try to make the supervisor put me on with the young ones rather than the old fogies?’ She meant the middle aged. ‘The young ones tell me about their college courses. And I can be excited with them. And they will listen to me, carefully, as I tell them my little wisdoms from over the years.' I must have missed out on those. 'These students would tell you how much they’ve benefited from working with me, I bet.’ I wouldn’t take the odds, myself. ‘And this one of them, Katrina, says in her letter how relieved she was to be able to speak to me one particular rainy Saturday afternoon during a harp recital.’ Was this Katrina overdoing the detail, or my mother? I don’t know. ‘She’s in love with Maria, a bit older, and it’s her first experience of being in love with someone of the same sex. And she goes on to say how confused she’d been and that I had so put her mind at rest. And she ends by saying how she honestly thinks I am the most wonderful person she’s ever met.' Her voice suddenly became darker, and furtive. ‘What do you think I should do about this letter?’

I answered, ‘Report this Katrin to HR’, made my excuses and rang off.

I felt disgusted at my mother, embarrassed and ashamed for her, angry at the selfish intrusion.

Those feelings lasted well into my Sunday.

There are, of course, more constructive ways I might have responded. I was going to feel what I was going to feel; why also make my mother feel bad? 

I try to follow the following rule in life, a paraphrase of the slogan often seen on cute signs in shared bathroom facilities, ‘Please leave the people you meet better than you find them.’ 

Jollying folk along, hopefully raising a smile. No cost, might help, who knows?

I could have responded to my mother with love. When she mentioned having caught me before I went out at that stupidly early time on a Sunday, on holiday, I might have said, ‘You know me, ma — up with the lark and to bed with the chickens.’

Or something.

And when she mentioned my getting slimming done: ‘How lovely of you to be supportive over this issue, mum. Thank you. Though, as we know, I’ve always been a lost cause re my weight: remember, when your waters were about to break, across three counties they issued flood warnings?’

Yes, both those above responses are rehearsed. Very much so. My mother is going to say the same button-pushing things over and over, so I have rehearsed some suitable, airy responses.

And regarding the letter itself: ‘Oh, mum, that’s wonderful. What a tribute from Katrin. I think you must go down to Lower Marsh and buy a nice frame from the in and out shop and put the letter in it, on your sitting room wall.’

Would she have seen that as satire? I doubt it.

Would any narcissist?

And to disarm her button-pushing spitefulness about my weight: ‘Sorry, mum, I didn’t catch what you said there?’

(Back them up…)

Then if/when she had repeated herself: ‘And what effect do you hope saying that might have on me?’

(Let them burble their way into that abashed silence… )

Stay calm, deflect, make them take responsibility for their shittiness, is my motto.

It’s not easy, it won’t make you necessarily feel any better, but it will at best mitigate any potential worsening of a situation.

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