Cheyenne, Help! Shouldn't Mom's Money Come Without Strings?
Cheyenne, help!
I was a teen mom. I didn’t want my daughter raised in the rigid, upper-class, WASPY world that I knew as a child so I ran away with her when she was a year old. We’ve been on our own since. I’ve been doing pretty well; I have a good job managing an inn and I own the house we live in.
But my brilliant daughter was just admitted to one of the best private schools in the state! I’m so proud of her. This school is going to send her straight to Harvard! The trouble is, I don’t have enough money to pay the private school tuition. I’ve tried everything I could think of to secure a loan. My only choice is to go to…you guessed it…my parents.
I asked my mother for a loan and told her I would pay it back with interest. She countered with an offer that makes me want to puke: she and my dad will pay for my daughter’s private school tuition if we have dinner with them every Friday.
Every. Friday.
Just standing in the foyer of that house makes my skin crawl.
I thought my offer to pay interest was completely reasonable and my mother should have accepted it. How do I get her to see that letting me pay interest is the best way to go about this? How can I get my mom to accept that I just can’t be around her?
Lording Over Rory’s Education Like Eww, Ick
I’m here to help, LORELEI.
To be honest, reading your letter made me think you should check your privilege and do a land acknowledgment. You’re literally in the one percent. It doesn’t matter that you manage an inn now, or whatever. Your blood is still bluer than the Pacific on a clear day. Bluer than the middle stripe on the Russian flag. Bluer than my lips last night after I let my date choke me. Pretending you’re not living life on the easy setting is so cringe.
Plus, I don’t get why you want to send your daughter to an expensive private school. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to raise your child in that upper-crust world? You ran away from cotillions and mansions and Ivy League fundraisers, but now you want to send your daughter back to all of that? Make. It. Make. Sense.
I know you think this private school and the Ivy League are all about academics, and it’s just about how smart your “brilliant” daughter is, but that’s just you having your head up your ass. Private schools and the Ivies are all about perpetuating the class system, which you blithely push away with one hand and desperately grasp with the other. Excuse me if I seem unsympathetic, but I mean…come the fuck on. I hate to sound like an old man in a Ford F-150 and a MAGA hat, but pick a lane already, LORELEI!
My colleague, etiquette columnist Cornelia Fulton, is reading over my shoulder as I type this, and she pointed out to me that I have gone on for about 150 words and have yet to answer your actual question. I guess I’m just too annoyed by your letter. She has some advice for you, so I’m going to let her take over.
LORELEI, I want you to imagine a man on Death Row. In an hour’s time, he’ll be strapped into an electric chair. The executioner will throw the switch and thousands of electric volts will course through the man’s body until his skin smokes like a fried chicken. But before that happens, he gets a last meal.
The jailers bring him a sumptuous feast. Raw oysters. Vichyssoise. Lobster steaming under a silver cloche. Asparagus with hollandaise. Roast lamb. Peaches in chartreuse jelly. Rich chocolate fondue. And in between these courses, they bring him a champagne sorbet to cleanse his pallet.
Imagine, for a moment, that the warden takes a look at that sorbet and fancies it. The prison is very hot and stuffy and the dish of sorbet looks so refreshing, He notices that the condemned man is not eating his sorbet and considers asking if he can have it.
At this stage in his life, the inmate has very little leverage. No one has to accommodate his wishes ever again, and he knows it. Yet, he still gets to decide under which circumstances he will allow the warden to take his sorbet. He can’t bargain for his life with it, but he can, for example, tell the warden he can have the sorbet if he agrees to flap his arms and squawk like a chicken. The warden then gets to decide whether the sorbet is worth this act of degradation.
The warden could simply snatch the sorbet, but he doesn’t, because respecting the inmate’s last meal is how the warden honors the shared humanity of all concerned. Even whose demise is scheduled down to the minute deserves one last shred of dignity before they fry him.
If you haven’t grasped my point, let me make it obvious. Even if your mother is so evil she belongs on Death Row, her money is still hers. She gets to decide under which circumstances she will give it away. If you want this money, accept her terms without complaint. If you cannot, keep your daughter in public school. If she’s as smart as you say she is, she’ll do fine, even if she has to go to a state college.
Cheyenne is right. If you really want to be different from the way you were raised, you’ll have to do without and get used to hearing ‘no.’
Do you have a question from one of our advice columnists? To write to Cornelia Fulton with questions about etiquette, Annette Parker about the value of your old toys or Cheyenne James with your relationship questions, become a subscriber today!
Send an email to elizabeth.sowden@gmail.com attn: Cornelia, Annette or Cheyenne, and an answer to your question will appear on Not a Little Lamb.