I’m trying to figure out how to tell my mom about the blog. I’ve come up with every reason and justification for failing to mention it – there’s the fact that she only recently discovered this mysterious hamlet known as “the internet,” and, after hours of patient coaching from her children, still works herself into a frothing rage trying to open a Word document let alone locate a blog. But that excuse only worked for the first few weeks – if she knew her daughter was publishing a website, she would find a way to access it using only a clothespin, a cardboard box, an outlet and some rusty wire if necessary. My other excuses are equally hollow.

When I started this blog, I sent the address to an inner circle of friends and family members, thinking that they’d find it cute and perhaps get a laugh. My mom, however, presented an entirely different scenario (my parents haven’t occupied the same room without at least 1 attorney present since I was about 9, so no danger of my dad giving me up). Once the site got popular, there was the initial fear of matriarchal reprisal, that my mom would act as the voice of all Reasons and Programming I so badly want to erase. “You’ll jeopardize your law career, this is irresponsible, you can’t say these things about the partners you work for, this job is too important,” I hear her voice shrilling in my head. I’ll create imaginary conversations with her, running through all the objections and cutting denunciations she might utter about what I say in each post, how I say it, whether I’ve mentioned her at all (a charming Catch-22, since I have written about my father, so mom will be insulted if she isn’t mentioned, but if she ever saw the posts about her, she would pop multiple arteries) and on and on down the line.

But these justifications are still superficial – I’ve been handling my mercurial mother for years, I’m the leading expert in managing her temper upon my committing worse sins than writing on the internet. At the core of my hesitance is a deep-seated insecurity about identity-revelation. As children we grow up, eventually reaching legal (if not emotional) adulthood, move out, and commence our version of life as we create it, either embracing or molting the teachings of our parents. Eventually we reach a point where they, despite their God-like status throughout our youth, may not necessarily have any idea who we really are. During my brief stint as an adult, I’ve deliberately created an image for my mother based on what I know she wants to see – a smiling, well-groomed, articulate daughter, the lawyer in Manhattan who can order in French and discuss opera at dinner parties. She’s never seen the dark underbelly of my personality, the brooding foul-mouthed wiseass who will blithely rip into her environment and happily put her law career on the line to satisfy her craving for self-expression. The thoughts I feed this blog aren’t always pretty or genteel (if ever). Sure, sometimes I tell funny stories about silly lawyers and Manhattan life, but just as often I pour words on the screen like gallons of rancid milk, and ignore the smell. Not exactly the portrait of polished urbanity I paint at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I don’t mind that thousands of people, some friends and family, most absolute strangers, read this thing daily. I have no problem admitting my inadequacies and failures to internet masses. Yours aren’t the eyes I have to face if I get fired and smeared across the bottom of the New York private sector’s collective loafer. Telling her “Mom, I’ve been fired,” that would be worse than exposure itself. The first hint of her anger and I’m back, teetering in my 7th grade penny loafers as I sob under the basement stairs after bringing home a “D” on a pre-algebra test (fucking math, bain of my student existence, it should be an entirely optional subject). I can still hear her furious ranting: How would I get into a “good” college with grades like these? How would I get into law school? What possible future would I have? Even now when I face her, any self-confidence, grit or backbone quickly disintegrates, and I’m 12 years old, cowering in the face of her rage and disappointment. Can I leave this job, this money, this life to do something I love? Absolutely. Can I tell my mother? Entirely different story.

But despite any lingering childhood scars, I can’t escape knowing how hurtful it would be to learn that masses of strangers read details about your daughter’s life daily, while you barely know her home address. What better way to wound and alienate your mother, the one person who desperately wants to be a part of your life simply because you exist. Plus, like all messy situations, the longer I delay the inevitable, the worse the end result. So the time has come to drop the petulant child routine and just tell her about all this, regardless of consequences. Timing is everything – her birthday is coming up, that should be as good an opportunity as any (”Happy Birthday Mom! Here’s your Chanel No. 5 and Magnolia cupcakes. And, um, by the way, if you happen to turn on CNN and see footage of me being dragged by my hair through a lobby by large security guards and bodily tossed through the front doors of my office building, don’t get worried, it’s all under control”).

At least I know that, whatever happens, I’ll still have the blog.