Yesterday I spent the evening with two old friends who have been my friends for so long I met their mothers at the same time that I met them.
Our mothers have strong opinions and a fierce love for their families. Diana and Mary Kay and Eileen* have always figured largely in our lives.
As we talked about other things our mothers kept coming up in the conversation; woven in as seamlessly as our husbands and children and pets and new cars and favorite restaurants. As they talked I kept seeing their mother's faces super-imposed upon their own. I saw them in the sagging jowls and crow's feet, in a certain wave of the hands and deeply familiar fake-scowl expression that I've been seeing since I was five.
And I know they saw my mother's face in my own. And also in my hands and sagging breasts and well-padded hips. I am now the age my mother was when these girls were becoming teens and rebelling against my mother, the principal at the school we all attended. In conversations with these two I can simultaneously be the child and teen and young adult we all were together, and also now understand and see into the mind of the middle-aged wife and mother and principal my mother once was. Talking to these two is, from one moment to the next, condensing my entire lifespan or telescoping into her life.
It is deeply complicated and infinitely simple, all at the same time. When we told the stories of our grandmother's dying, all three of us having experienced that now, we spoke in the short-hand one can use when the mother-daughter chain has been unbroken. We said, "I needed to be there" and "I couldn't let my mother be alone" and everyone understood all the reasons why. All the reasons.
Driving home...it hit me. But how will these girls talk about me? Will they be there for me when my mother lies dying? Will it feel, to all of us, like the right place for them to be, without question?
And what role will their biological mother play in our futures? Am I raising them to 18 only to have them return to her, stomping out of my house with great resentment and anger? (I try not to be petty and let this fear get in the way of the bonding I'm trying to do right now at 1 and 3 and so far away from 18 I shouldn't even be remotely considering it...but I do. I picture that scenario and so many more and it hurts. And hinders. I am sorry, girls, but I am weak.)
But, if we do have our happy ending and someday these girls are in their 40s and find themselves sharing a glass of wine in a lovely home and chatting with girlfriends before driving away in their better-than-average cars, will these girls, who most likely will tower over me by a good foot or more someday and look nothing like me, mind that none of their friends see my face when they laugh about their childhoods together? I hope not. I really, really hope not.
*As always, all names have been changed to protect privacy.
Our mothers have strong opinions and a fierce love for their families. Diana and Mary Kay and Eileen* have always figured largely in our lives.
As we talked about other things our mothers kept coming up in the conversation; woven in as seamlessly as our husbands and children and pets and new cars and favorite restaurants. As they talked I kept seeing their mother's faces super-imposed upon their own. I saw them in the sagging jowls and crow's feet, in a certain wave of the hands and deeply familiar fake-scowl expression that I've been seeing since I was five.
And I know they saw my mother's face in my own. And also in my hands and sagging breasts and well-padded hips. I am now the age my mother was when these girls were becoming teens and rebelling against my mother, the principal at the school we all attended. In conversations with these two I can simultaneously be the child and teen and young adult we all were together, and also now understand and see into the mind of the middle-aged wife and mother and principal my mother once was. Talking to these two is, from one moment to the next, condensing my entire lifespan or telescoping into her life.
It is deeply complicated and infinitely simple, all at the same time. When we told the stories of our grandmother's dying, all three of us having experienced that now, we spoke in the short-hand one can use when the mother-daughter chain has been unbroken. We said, "I needed to be there" and "I couldn't let my mother be alone" and everyone understood all the reasons why. All the reasons.
Driving home...it hit me. But how will these girls talk about me? Will they be there for me when my mother lies dying? Will it feel, to all of us, like the right place for them to be, without question?
And what role will their biological mother play in our futures? Am I raising them to 18 only to have them return to her, stomping out of my house with great resentment and anger? (I try not to be petty and let this fear get in the way of the bonding I'm trying to do right now at 1 and 3 and so far away from 18 I shouldn't even be remotely considering it...but I do. I picture that scenario and so many more and it hurts. And hinders. I am sorry, girls, but I am weak.)
But, if we do have our happy ending and someday these girls are in their 40s and find themselves sharing a glass of wine in a lovely home and chatting with girlfriends before driving away in their better-than-average cars, will these girls, who most likely will tower over me by a good foot or more someday and look nothing like me, mind that none of their friends see my face when they laugh about their childhoods together? I hope not. I really, really hope not.
*As always, all names have been changed to protect privacy.
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