{"id":11081,"date":"2014-02-05T05:00:48","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=11081"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:15:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:15:53","slug":"bullshot-cully-perlman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/bullshot-cully-perlman\/","title":{"rendered":"BULLshot: Cully Perlman"},"content":{"rendered":"

PW<\/strong>: A personal revelation: my relationship with my mother is surrounded by guilt. It’s because I feel I\u2019m not around enough, I\u2019m never able to talk on the phone, I\u2019m unable to give her the attention I used to give her (prior to marriage\/parenthood), etc. In sum, I often feel like I\u2019m a disappointment. My mom has never directly suggested that any of this is true, but, alas, I feel that it is. Reading \u201cA Three-Legged Table,\u201d I sensed that Ray has a similar mom issue. My working theory is that this is a common feeling among sons. What do you think, am I on to something?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CP:<\/strong> You most definitely are on to something. Everything in your question pretty much sums up how I feel and how I\u2019ve felt for years. A lot of autobiography comes through in my fiction. Whereas James Jr. struggles with issues related to his father\u2019s absence, Ray\u2019s issues are completely mom-related, and that\u2019s not by accident. My mother is the only person on this planet who believed in me and my writing from day one\u2014my focus on it, my passion for it, the peaks and valleys it has taken me through over the years, and the only person to back me up unconditionally. She\u2019s never wavered. So sure, the pressure is there. The pressure is there to be successful, to publish stories, to publish novels, to make her proud not only of me but of the decisions and sacrifices and effort she\u2019s made for years and years to see her son succeed at what he cares about. When I was younger I slept all day. People thought I was a bum. My mother was the one who pointed out that I was not a bum at all, that I was sleeping during the day because I was exhausted from writing all night. I needed the quiet to focus, and she understood that. She\u2019s always seemed to understand everything about me, even though I left home 20+ years ago. I suspect all moms know their children a little bit better than their children give them credit.<\/p>\n

The character Ray in the story avoids his mother because he doesn\u2019t want to see her sick but also for the same reasons you mention in your question. While it isn\u2019t overt, guilt is most assuredly a part of Ray\u2019s avoiding going upstairs to see his mother. I think that guilt is also there in James Jr. and more subtly in Willa, but Ray is the central character and his inability to climb a few steps is telling. I had trouble with this question because while our guilt is probably universal, it\u2019s also personal. I have a wife and daughter and a job and a million other things going on, but not a day goes by where I don\u2019t think, Am I disappointing my mom today? Did I not do something I could have to make her happy somehow? Hopefully my answer to your question just disappointed her a little less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mothers and guilt: thoughts from the author of “A Three Legged Table”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[751,22],"class_list":["post-11081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-guilt","tag-mothers","writer-pete-witte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17527,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11081\/revisions\/17527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}