I have the best mom ever! For all the little ways that she has, for 31 years, put my needs ahead of hers she deserves much more than just dedicating my very first blog entry to her. Of course, letting her know how much she is loved and appreciated is the least I can do for all the innumerable ways she selflessly has made my life a very charmed one. I fully believe that you can never be grateful enough for everything your parents do for you, but as my own very first mother’s day approaches and I reflect on how close I hope my relationship with my own daughter will be, I have realized that I owe my incredible mother an enormous apology.
From making coffee for me when she can’t stand the smell of it, and handing out money like it grows on trees, to not ever saying ‘no’ to any request I’ve thrown at her to date. These are just a few of the ways she has reached that ‘perfect mom’ status. As a mother-daughter team though, I’m afraid I have dropped the ball. My mom deserves so much more than what I have been able to offer, as a family member, as a daughter, and as a friend.
You see, I am incredibly independent. I love being alone. I’m sure my mother has known this even longer than I have. She loved to tell me about my first day of kindergarten when, instead of throwing the expected tantrum as she tried to leave, my little hand pulled away from hers as soon as we hit the schoolyard, and I have never looked back. Now the mark of a truly exceptional mom is not just knowing who I was from the get-go, but always fully respecting it, which she has, granted me all the space I needed.
For example, she and my father would, without fail, call my dorm extension at university every Sunday night at a prearranged time to talk… to my answering machine. I, was meanwhile relaxing a few feet away in the common room, watching whatever Sunday night show we were all addicted to at the time. Most mothers would drop a line later in the week to make sure all was well, some would call back over and over that very evening until they were reassured. My mother was content to put her love out there for me to receive at my own convenience, so that I wouldn’t miss a second of Temptation Island.
Of course, my mother will be the first person to admit that I did not inherit this trait from my social-butterfly father, but instead, I undoubtedly got it directly from her. But that may be where our similarities end.
Sometimes I wonder if my reclusive nature has been the cause of us not being as tight as some mothers and daughters. When I try to reflect on activities we no longer have in common I realize that, through no fault of hers, we actually never really had any. I’m pretty sure that if fathers gave birth, my family would always wonder what a maternity test might conclude.
Because we are polar opposites.
She loves to shop, I buy everything online. She’s retired but still works to get out of the house. I countdown the days until I can be on my next maternity leave so that I don’t have to go anywhere.
She does not have a very adventerous palate. She only likes a very limited selection of starchy, fatty foods like bread, butter, potatoes and cheese. I love everything you could put on my plate. Any spice, any ethnicity, any ingredient, any texture (except the dreaded olive, of course).
She grew up in a generation that did not value or encourage physical activity. I regularly lift weights and run.
Even when we share an interest that we are both passionate about, like reading, we still have very little common ground. She loves to whip through quick, easy reads with fast plots and little character development or description. I, in contrast, could have died happily after reading Ian McEwan take an entire page to describe how a curtain was draped just so in a peaceful room in Atonement it was so beautifully written.
It’s funny to me how different we are. She raised me, I happily lived under her roof for twenty years—and would move back in a heartbeat if my husband would let me!—and yet we have nothing in common. Another dualism of traits? I complain! Half the time, it seems, just to hear myself speak. My mother, on the other hand, is a pretty sick lady and you wouldn’t ever know it. She would never even let me know if something was wrong.
The thing you realize when someone close to you becomes ill, is how much better of a friend you could have been and how much time you’ve wasted that could have been spent together. Looking at my eight month old daughter, and how much I love her, it pains me to think about how little I have been there for my own mom. I think I have instead spent the time that we should have been spending becoming better friends worrying that we were too different to really enjoy each others’ company. Of course, none of these differences preclude a close friendship. We get along effortlessly and we both understand and really appreciate each others unique preferences and opinions. So why hasn’t anything changed?
Probably because I’ve spent even more time being terrified of what was going on with my mom’s health to ever be a part of it. Ignorance is bliss, and my mother would never in a million years want to burden any of her friends and family, least of all her children with any of her problems. I fully appreciated every second of this “bliss”, believing that I wanted our relationship to remain free of the pain it would cause her to talk about it.
This argument is obviously flawed though. I too would never want to burden my children with my difficulties, but I also hope that once my children are adults, that we will become very good friends, as I’m sure my mother wishes we were. Very good friends, though, would insist on being let in, to help shoulder the burden. I have failed my mom in this respect.
And then, there’s the anger.
Of course, my mother knew this trait was in me before I did myself as well. As a child, the book that best described me was one in the Little Monsters series called, I was so mad. It is, in fact, the only book from my childhood that my mother kept for me. It describes how the little monster becomes more and more angry with just regular, but “unfair” activities in her daily life until she decides to run away. I don’t know if it’s just part of the grief process, but there was a considerable amount of time I spent angry about my mother’s diagnosis. I, of course, have simply run away across town and kept myself busy with life and love. I sincerely hope that this anger has never been apparent.
What may have been apparent, I am ashamed to admit, is how unsupportive I have been at times of the care my mother takes of herself—or lack thereof—and how she chooses to spend her time.
It’s hard to have no control over, and harder yet to put yourself in the shoes of, your complete opposite. I understand that she only has so many hours in a day and so much energy in her body, so when she grabs an unhealthy snack instead of lean, nutritive fuel for her body, I understand. When she can’t sleep, I get that she just doesn’t have the time, energy or know-how to get herself into a proper sleep and fitness routine.
I also understand wanting to do something for a living rather than sitting around, especially in a position where she is deservedly praised for her hard work and insight. It was not uncommon to hear about many of my mom’s former co-workers dropping dead a few years or even months after retiring and that probably worries my mother enough to keep her at her optional post-retirement employment. And while I may understand it, it is still difficult to support. The health nut in me wants her to spend her time getting fit and strong for what may come, and selfishly, the daughter who has wasted so much time to herself would love to spend the last few months I have off work building that lost friendship and watching her enjoy her time with my own daughter while our schedules are still open enough to do so.
I have cautiously tip-toed around my feelings until now by saying it was ‘difficult to support’ the decisions my mom makes, but in truth, she saved the right book. I was so mad! I was mad that I wasted so much time. I was mad that she let me keep her at arm’s length. I was mad that my children wouldn’t see her at their graduations and weddings. And I was mad that she didn’t take care of herself for me.
But therein lies the problem.
She, in fact, didn’t take care of herself because of me. She has never once put herself before her family. Now, after a lifetime of making sure everyone around her had all they needed and more (in my case, all the space I could ever want without any lack of love or luxury), at the expense of her own wishes and health, her body is finally forcing her to slow down.
She has worked in a physically challenging job on a swing shift for her entire life to provide every opportunity for me. She has never once even hinted at any pain I may have caused her by neglecting our friendship with my independent spirit. And I cannot even imagine the psychological toll it takes to wear the brave face that hasn’t once cracked in more than three years of gradually more and more disheartening news.
So this mother’s day, while I reflect on the incredible love I have for my own beautiful daughter and all the hope I have for a close relationship with her when she is grown, I offer not vanilla bubble bath or a box of turtles chocolates, but a heartfelt apology to my own incredible mother. Throughout my life I have never once questioned how much she loves me but until you are a mother yourself you can’t ever imagine how intense that love is. The love of a mother for her daughter. It would be impossible to fully reciprocate, but I plan on trying my hardest anyways from this day forward.
At the end of I was so mad the little monster decides that she will instead run away some other day. Likewise, I have decided to put away my fierce independence, my judgements, my selfishness and my awkwardness for some other day because I have my mother right here, right now, and she is not only the best mom in the world, but one of the greatest friends I could ever hope for. She is a mother that deserves a daughter who not only receives, but gives all of that love right back.
All of us mothers do.
TheRealNicJ 