Cathy's Relationship with her Mom and Dad

Early life
Gildiner makes it clear at the beginning of her memoir that she has had a strong but unusual relationship with her parents. In her early years, when Cathy worked at McClure’s drug store, her father was her employer. Her mother on the other hand was a very loving mystery to her. “Why my mother had not been included in the house hunt was a mystery to me. It wasn’t like she was busy. She’d never in my memory cooked, cleaned or held a job.”(Pg. 9) Both of her parents seemed out of place to her. “…I realized how much my parents, who were in their forties when they had me, had aged. They looked more like grandparents than parents.” (Pg. 5) During and after the move however things began to change for Cathy and her parents. With her father it was particularly noticeable. When the moving van arrived and told the McClure’s they wouldn’t be able to fit their “French armoires and early American dressers” into the house Cathy saw a difference in her father. “I had never seen him look as though he was not in charge”(pg. 10) “Since there was nothing else to look at I went back to the living room, where my mother stood looking lost while my father was in the bathroom. Even with the door closed we heard everything, as though we were standing right next to him.” (pg.11)

Later Life
After the incident with Rhonda and the boys Cathy found herself being irritated immensely by almost anything her father said. Her mother began reassuring her that at some point in everyone’s teenage years they began to hate one or both of their parents. “She really didn’t get that my father was not just annoying- everything he did sent me into orbit.” (pg.144) She told her mother about her father’s bizarre behavior but her mother dismissed it as teenage angst towards parental figures. Cathy also buys into that theory shortly after the discovery of her father’s brain tumor. “What was I going to say? Since the age of fourteen I had found him unbearable, but that had just been teenage stuff. However hard it was, I had to separate abnormal behaviour from teenage loathing.” (pg.152. In reference to her father’s tumor.) From this point until her father’s death Cathy’s relationship with her father changes very drastically. Cathy’s mother seems almost unresponsive to the news that her husband is going to die and does almost nothing to help Cathy control her father. “ I ran out into the backyard where my mother was on a chaise longue, reading. ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ I cried./’He isn’t going to listen to me.’/’Do you have suggestions about what we should do?’ I asked, since she was clearly taking no responsibility and had gone back to reading the paper.” (pg. 155) This realization of her mother’s passiveness in the situation makes Cathy mature at a surprising rate for a teen. At the same time her responsibility is now at an unfair level for any teen.