Every year at this time I find myself thinking about my mother. She died twenty years ago, and I still miss her, even the judgmental part of her, which in her later years I could listen to with some amusement. This year added a whole new, and rather delightful twist, to my memories of her. When I was last in Portland at my daughter’s home holding my newest grandson, barely five months old, in my arms, I watched her explain something to her oldest son, not yet three. She used normal words, not childish ones, as if she expected him to understand, and he clearly did, standing up tall, obviously proud to have her explain a task to him in a way she might have explained it to anyone. I saw my mother doing the same with me, and was instantly back in our kitchen in Roselle Park, New Jersey, a long narrow room with a kitchenette at one end, and a very wide counter down one whole side of it, where we would both often stand, me on a chair, as she taught me how to roll out a pie crust, or cut up onion for a stew. She expected me to understand her directions, and I usually did. If not, I knew I could tell her I didn’t, and she would find another way to explain what was needed. It was thrilling to me to see my daughter follow this same path with Gus. She must have learned from me. I am glad to have passed on this gem of mothering, because I believe it is a gem. When we respect our children from an early age, they learn to respect us in return, or so I believe. Driving home I knew my mother would be pleased. It made me feel as though she were not really gone, but is still with us all, as I pass along the things I learned from her to my daughters. And that is a very good feeling indeed.
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I think making mistakes, even big ones, is part of life. We can’t be any more perfect as mothers as we can at anything else. Not forgiving ourselves doesn’t help anyone, including our kids. A novel idea is that by learning to forgive ourselves we are modeling that behavior for them.
It is amazing to me how our views of our mother alter as we age and look back. I hadn’t remembered the pure joy of racing down the slide at the park with my mother until I looked back and realized that was pre heart attack. The stifled woman I knew later came later, and was also a result of my Dad’s attitudes and fears. She did give in to them of course. Thinking about what we’ve learned from our mothers, both good and bad, eventually gets reflected back in our own kids. Important to let ourselves see the positive and not deny the negative.
It warms my heart that talking about baking with my mom, and how she smelled in the morning to me, helped you see a whole other side of your relationship with your mother, another time, that wasn’t traumatic. That was true for me too, as I wrote. There was time before the first heart attack, when I was four. Sometimes I fear there is too much detail in the book, but then I hear from another woman about which detail spurred a memory for them that changed perspective, and I figure, OK, the details were worth it. They count.