The Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie

My mom is being a jerk again. Last year when I couldn't come home for Christmas she freaked, said i was reneging on a promise i made when i moved clear across the country that i would still be home for the important stuff. This year I won't be back again for Christmas Eve when my whole family comes over to my parents' house. It's not that i don't want to. It's that i can't. My job, which i actually like for once in my life, just won't allow it.
The conversation I had with her this morning just sucked. She was generally irritated and impatient and eventhough she didn't freak out on me or even address anything to do with me directly...

i know that when she says, "I don't think i'm going to do the Christmas cards. I can't. My shoulder hurts so bad, i can't imagine sitting there and writing forever. I just can't do it."
that she means, "why aren't you here to write my Christmas cards for me, you jerk?!? Who's going to make the cookies? Who's going to help clean the house?"

I know a lot of this is my own guilt. I want to go home but I can't because I'm trying to have a life, the kind I couldn't seem to find in Rhode Island. If I could've I wouldn't have left. I want to be there and I want to help but I can't unless I quit my job. Then what? Slow and painful office job slow brain death. No thanks. Not again.

The problem is that I know she's tired. She gets totally wiped out on the Saturdays when she has my niece and nephew over. Christmas shopping exhausts her. If i was there I'd do that shit for her, not just because I had to but because I wanted to. Because she's earned it.

My mom is 60 years old and is still working 40-60 hours a week at a factory with no relief in site.
My dad turned 61 yesterday. He runs the textile mill where my mom works. A place that could shut down at anytime, leaving them with a mortgage and no retirement money.
Monday my dad will have his second knee surgery. He won't be much good at helping prepare for Christmas.

I feel so bad that I can't be there. What i feel even worse about is the academic-pauper lifestyle that i live. My parents left fascist Portugal and came to the U.S. in the 60's because they wanted a better life and they wanted to have children in a place where they could prosper. I don't really think they got it.

They've been doing manual labor since they were both 7 years old. In Portugal, my dad tended the sheep for his family, drove a taxi, and was a travelling salesman. He came to the States and has worked in factories since. Despite his bad written English and his broken spoken English he runs a mill because he busted his ass and people like him. He's a good guy. He still runs machines when someone is out or they have a large order.
My mom ran her house at the age of 7. Cooked dinner for 5 in a pot over a fireplace and in a brick oven. She washed the family's clothes on a rock in the stream by their house. At 9 she did the deliveries for the bakery my grandmother worked at. At 14 she was moved into a house with a professor, his wife, and two young children. She was their live-in maid. She came to the States and has worked in factories ever since.

They paid for my brother and I to go to college because it was a promise they had made to themselves, that they would educate and better their children.
My brother is a social worker for DCYF in Massachusetts. I volunteer for nonprofits or always have some job where i make no money. and when I do have one that pays well they usually make me miserable so i quit.

I know she's happy that we can do what we want to do but i know she resents that no one is there to take care of her after everything she's been through.

I've always complained about trustafarians and warehouse rats who piss away their time indulging themselves in whatever entertains them for 10 seconds. Acting like their privalege has no obligations.
But what makes me any better than them? That i do nonprofit work? That when i was in college i dragged myself out of bed for classes a lot of the time because i'd calculated that each one cost my parents fify dollars? That i worked for my pot money?
What the fuck makes me any different? That i feel guilty?

I promised my mom that when they got old i would do whatever it took to support them finacially since they have no pension coming and no savings. I would take whatever job.
The time when they're actually "old" seems to be arriving sooner than i'd imagines. 50 years of labor does that to people. Makes them old quick. And soon, i think, i'll have to make some choices and decide if those promises can be fulfilled.