Tuesday, February 28, 2006
My Mother
Now, I could have waited until Mother's Day to do this post, but I felt like it was so important to get these thoughts off my mind before it became...well, frazzled,that I must get them down now.
If I had to think of one woman who I can honestly say is the most fascinating, awe inspiring, commendable person I know, I would honestly say it's my mother. Now wait, hold your horses, don't think I'm being mushy and reflecting my "I wub you Mom" construction paper cards onto my sacred space. My mother and I have a trouble past at best. We love each other but it is with a determination not experienced by most mothers and daughters. We fight for our love, every day, all the time in the fact of many destructive interlopers: memories, mistakes, words, expressions, expectations. But in the end we love each other for two very distinct reasons I think: first, because we both feel like we ought to (being flesh of one flesh, blood of one blood and all) and also because we see in each other such a clear reflection of self and sheer admiration of the resilience and the will that it takes to be such an innovative and strong woman inspires in us an almost Narcissistic kind of affection. In short, I see in my mother everything that I am today and everything I want to be. In me, I believe she sees the positive things that flowed naturally from her to me.
Now the reason I am dedicating this blog to my mother is because she read the blog for the first time the other day. Then she called me and spoke to me about it. It is a curious thing when the cyber world and the real world come into contact with one another. I didn't know quite how to feel about discussing my blog with my mom. She wished particularly to talk about the Valentine's Day post. I was a little uncomfortable about her reading that for the same reason I get uncomfortable with anyone I know reading anything I write that purports to be factual. I am always afraid I've gotten some small yet crucial detail wrong or that my memory is faulty. To the stranger, the details don't matter; only the feeling evoked matters. To those close to me, the devil is in those details and if one is wrong it invalidates anything else I have to say. So, she calls me and she says, "wow, I almost feel like it's my fault that you hate Valentine's Day?" Now that one threw me for a loop. "Why?" I asked. "Well, because of the wedding," she responded.
Now it is a curious thing that mothers before a certain era (I'd put it at the 1980's) can do such a thing as my mother did. She could read that whole post about Valentine's Day and come out with the assertion that it is her fault that I hate that day. It's funny because that quality is notoriously absent of mothers today, even when it should be ever present. My oldest daughter, for instance, is what one might call a "spirited child" (she has a lot of tantrums and emotional outbursts). I feel like a bad mother just writing this, but when she does what I call her "diva thing," my first thought is not "this is my fault. I have done something to cause this." My first thought, embarrassingly enough, is "what is wrong with her?" It's not that I think my child is mental. She posesses half my DNA so she can only be as mental as her father and I put together (wait, that doesn't help my case much...), but that I don't automatically assume that anything I did or said contributed to who she is. I think that because I have this pervasive belief that childhood is this somewhat pupal stage where interaction with adults is both primary and peripheral at the same time. Everything my mother ever did affects me in some way just as what my father did (or, rather, didn't do as it were) affects me, but ultimately those were just pictures in the picture show, influences upon which I based my view of life. Based on the things my mother and I went thorugh, I could have basis to hate her, but I don't. I love her very much. Based on those same experiences, and against all convention, my mother could hate me, but she doesn't. So there is an element of choice in these things. The actions of adults in my life were taken into consideration and I chose how to feel about said adults based on not only their actions, but who I am as a person.
I think that's what makes the love between my mother and I unique. That we choose to love each other despite all the very valid reasons we have not to. I am not a very good daughter. Admittedly, I am very self centered, notorious for missing cues on when to be emotionally supportive, and (possibly the worst crime of all) I don't visit my mother enough. But she is still there to talk to me whenever I need to, gives advice liberally, gives judgement conservatively, and makes sure never to miss an opportunity to tell me how great I am. That is the essence of motherhood I think. So I guess the message that I'd send to her and to the world through this blog is that nothing you ever did messed me up. To the contrary, everything that ever happened between us was a learning experience, a feeling experience, and I am thankful for that. Even though I am an odd, ambiguous, stubborn, self centered little brat sometimes, that's what makes me "me" and I don't wish to be anyone else. Had you done anything different, I would have been.
"I wub you mommy"
If I had to think of one woman who I can honestly say is the most fascinating, awe inspiring, commendable person I know, I would honestly say it's my mother. Now wait, hold your horses, don't think I'm being mushy and reflecting my "I wub you Mom" construction paper cards onto my sacred space. My mother and I have a trouble past at best. We love each other but it is with a determination not experienced by most mothers and daughters. We fight for our love, every day, all the time in the fact of many destructive interlopers: memories, mistakes, words, expressions, expectations. But in the end we love each other for two very distinct reasons I think: first, because we both feel like we ought to (being flesh of one flesh, blood of one blood and all) and also because we see in each other such a clear reflection of self and sheer admiration of the resilience and the will that it takes to be such an innovative and strong woman inspires in us an almost Narcissistic kind of affection. In short, I see in my mother everything that I am today and everything I want to be. In me, I believe she sees the positive things that flowed naturally from her to me.
Now the reason I am dedicating this blog to my mother is because she read the blog for the first time the other day. Then she called me and spoke to me about it. It is a curious thing when the cyber world and the real world come into contact with one another. I didn't know quite how to feel about discussing my blog with my mom. She wished particularly to talk about the Valentine's Day post. I was a little uncomfortable about her reading that for the same reason I get uncomfortable with anyone I know reading anything I write that purports to be factual. I am always afraid I've gotten some small yet crucial detail wrong or that my memory is faulty. To the stranger, the details don't matter; only the feeling evoked matters. To those close to me, the devil is in those details and if one is wrong it invalidates anything else I have to say. So, she calls me and she says, "wow, I almost feel like it's my fault that you hate Valentine's Day?" Now that one threw me for a loop. "Why?" I asked. "Well, because of the wedding," she responded.
Now it is a curious thing that mothers before a certain era (I'd put it at the 1980's) can do such a thing as my mother did. She could read that whole post about Valentine's Day and come out with the assertion that it is her fault that I hate that day. It's funny because that quality is notoriously absent of mothers today, even when it should be ever present. My oldest daughter, for instance, is what one might call a "spirited child" (she has a lot of tantrums and emotional outbursts). I feel like a bad mother just writing this, but when she does what I call her "diva thing," my first thought is not "this is my fault. I have done something to cause this." My first thought, embarrassingly enough, is "what is wrong with her?" It's not that I think my child is mental. She posesses half my DNA so she can only be as mental as her father and I put together (wait, that doesn't help my case much...), but that I don't automatically assume that anything I did or said contributed to who she is. I think that because I have this pervasive belief that childhood is this somewhat pupal stage where interaction with adults is both primary and peripheral at the same time. Everything my mother ever did affects me in some way just as what my father did (or, rather, didn't do as it were) affects me, but ultimately those were just pictures in the picture show, influences upon which I based my view of life. Based on the things my mother and I went thorugh, I could have basis to hate her, but I don't. I love her very much. Based on those same experiences, and against all convention, my mother could hate me, but she doesn't. So there is an element of choice in these things. The actions of adults in my life were taken into consideration and I chose how to feel about said adults based on not only their actions, but who I am as a person.
I think that's what makes the love between my mother and I unique. That we choose to love each other despite all the very valid reasons we have not to. I am not a very good daughter. Admittedly, I am very self centered, notorious for missing cues on when to be emotionally supportive, and (possibly the worst crime of all) I don't visit my mother enough. But she is still there to talk to me whenever I need to, gives advice liberally, gives judgement conservatively, and makes sure never to miss an opportunity to tell me how great I am. That is the essence of motherhood I think. So I guess the message that I'd send to her and to the world through this blog is that nothing you ever did messed me up. To the contrary, everything that ever happened between us was a learning experience, a feeling experience, and I am thankful for that. Even though I am an odd, ambiguous, stubborn, self centered little brat sometimes, that's what makes me "me" and I don't wish to be anyone else. Had you done anything different, I would have been.
"I wub you mommy"
# posted by Bariatric Foodie @ 7:55 AM 
