My Mother/Myself?

Yesterday my partner, Wonono, graduated from Peninsula College in addiction studies as a counselor.  His daughter, Neftali, took many pictures and last night he downloaded them to his computer to show us.  In one shot I was standing sideways looking at him and his advisor.  I was totally shocked.  The person I saw was my mother!  I have never thought I looked like her, but there she was: in her stance, in the way she held her head, and the look in her eye.  I wondered, and still do, if that has to do with my age, and my memories of her as she became older.  Then this morning, I began to think of other ways I was like her, more so each year.  My interest in and involvement with doing something about social issues and injustice seemed an obvious place to start.  Her women friends were a very significant part of her life. Ditto.  She loved telling stories. Duh.  She gave up a career to marry and raise her children, but never seemed truly satisfied, at least to me.  I gave up quite a bit for my husbands (there were two), but have learned to maintain my self as separate and to hold to my beliefs, time use, concerns, and needs without always putting my significant other, or my kids, first.  Sounds simple, but it sure as hell hasn’t been for me, and she never got it.  She might even label my hard-won choices in how to live as selfish, but that is not how I see it.  If anything, I see my new behaviors as finally not being selfless.  That may be a generational thing.  She involved herself in the lives of others, which I do as well, but I have learned that this can be seen as intrusive, and often may be.  I try to ‘make suggestions’ only when asked, but when I see someone I care about heading down a dangerous path, as I see it, I am sometimes not successful at keeping my nose out.  She probably would have seen that as a silly goal.  ‘Helping’ is always good.  Not true, I’ve learned.  My mother laughed easily and loud, which I do too.  She loved poking fun at herself, and often, in a wry way, at those she loved, including me. On the other end of that spectrum, she could be quite judgmental.  I hope to God that I am less so. I do know that I can’t know the outcome of the choices my friends, partners and kids make, and that my belief about the right path for them may be totally wrong.  I doubt my mother ever thought about that.   When I see my daughter, Leah, pulling one of her sons into her arms and kissing them all over, both of them laughing and laughing, I see my mother. That natural warmth and affection seems a wonderful trait to have passed down the generations, and one her own mother definitely lacked. So I am like her in positive ways and negative ones.  Ways I’ve always understood and ways I haven’t.  A last thought.  A friend recently said, as we talked about aging and adjusting to being in the last third of life, “I won’t be totally gone when I die because I see myself and my behaviors in my children, so in a funny way, I’ll still be around, hovering, inside them.  Passing it on.”  For some reason I find that notion comforting.