Olive Kitteridge and letting go

My book club happened to pick Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Kitteridge” as our selection this month before it received the Pulitzer Prize. We felt very smug about our discriminating literary tastes after it got the award.
The book is a series of interconnected stories about a large, 60-something woman who is very blunt to the point of abusive and who both adores and is mean to her husband and son. Naturally, the son moves 3,000 miles away to California and breaks his bewildered mothers heart. (Click here for a link to the Christian Science Monitor story and the Nite Swim blog about the book.
“If you have boys, you have to get used to the idea that you won’t be part of their lives,” one mother of two boys said. We then got into a lively debate about whether daughters really are better about keeping in touch.
Many of us said that we are the ones who are in charge of keeping touch and that we even keep in touch with our in-laws or nag our husbands to keep in touch. One woman said her brother was good about calling her parents but then again, he is in Spain and her parents are in New Jersey.
I call my mom a couple of times a week and she often laments that she hasn’t heard from one of my brothers for weeks. With all of my brothers, the onus is on my mother or me to make an effort to keep in touch. They don’t call, they don’t write. Is this the typical boy/man behavior?
Then again, one woman pointed out, the sons of single women seem to be very protective of their mothers and to be closer with them when they grow up. Should we all go out and get divorced to make sure we have a better relationship with our kids?
Then there’s the whole daughter-in-law thing. I live in dread that I will have daughter-in-laws who hate me as thoroughly as Olive Kitteridge’s daughter-in-law. I’m not quite as intrusive as she is but I think there’s often tension between mothers and daughters-in-law.
Two of my brothers live in my hometown and visit my father at least once a week. So they are dutiful sons to the parent who probably needs it the most. Maybe they’re less in touch with my mother because she’s so independent or maybe they have their own issues with her.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my sons probably won’t go shopping with me. (Although William does like to shop so maybe they will). They may not chat on the phone with me the way I do with my mom. And the probably won’t ever quilt with me. But I hope we’ll find some way of being in touch.
Of course all this hand wringing over children who are still several years away from college is a little funny. I told one friends I’m not sure whether I should worry about them moving away and leaving me or I should worry that they won’t move away and leave me. I suspect the later would be worse for them. I don’t really want them tied to my apron strings. I’m just hoping that whatever ties we have don’t fray or get broken when my sons are adults and I’m an overbearing old lady.
In the meantime, I have to pick them up from school and take them to piano lessons. We might go out for pizza and watch a video and if we want to be in touch, I just have to reach out. I might as well savor that while it lasts.