I am 38 years old, and still I wake up some mornings thinking “I want my mom.” I wanted my mom when I was sick (with mono it turned out) while working as a camp counselor while in college, when I was pregnant, nursing and chasing a toddler all at once, and later when my kids were giving me trouble of the emotional variety and their dad was 10000 leagues away. Now I want my mom to come and help me pack and tell me what I need to do to move, even though I’ve done this 8 or 9 times now. My husband is a great help and efficient at getting things done. But there’s a different kind of comfort that Mom provides. I don’t think I will ever stop wanting my mom to tell me everything is going to be okay.
When my siblings and I hit adolescence and were relentless in giving our mom a hard time, not just with our bad behavior but with our catty comments about her appearance and actions, we secretly still wanted her to come and tuck us in at night. Or at least to come in and announce “Lights out means no talking.” My kids are starting to tease me in a similar fashion. They love to point out signs of aging and to comment on what a nerd I was in school and how out of touch I am now. We called my mom chubby and old and mean. We liked to catch her in small acts of hypocrisy. We worked on her weaknesses. Meanwhile she overlooked ours – or rather, loved us in spite of them.
In reality she was the prettiest mom around. Even now, when she come to visit and help out (thanks, Mom!), she still gets compliments from my friends about how pretty and put together and cheerful she is. She may have affected a different voice for certain company, but who doesn’t? Now I wonder if what really pained her was not the direct teasing, but the meanness we wrecked on each other. As a mother I finally understand how the daily antagonism between siblings breaks your heart.
I wonder if I lived closer to my mother if I would wake up and think “When can I get away from my mother?” which is what I thought when I was an teenager and yearned to go far far away to college. I imagined living in a garret with the rats and my books after college, part Sarah Crewe, part … Jo March? Jim Burden? I wanted to distance myself from the person I was and take on a new identity independent of my roots. I wanted to be someone interesting and clever, not someone from a small town with a relatively normal, uninteresting family.
I outgrew that dream pretty quickly. And now I envy those African mothers from Babies and the Asian mothers like Amy Tan’s who shoehorn several generations into one home. Someone else around to remind the siblings to be kind to one another, to say someday you’ll all be best friends, would be nice. A book review in the WSJ a couple weeks ago described the importance of a mother to different siblings. (May 28-29) Please Look After Mom by a Korean, Kyung-Sook Shin, is the book. The review by Pico Iyer, who lives in Japan, makes the point that the book is topically about a Korean siblings whose country mother gets lost when she comes to visit them in the city, but the theme of our relationship to the past and to tradition is what is at the core. The siblings have left behind their past and mocked their mother, but when she is missing they realize how dear she is, or what an effect she has had on the people they have become – or so I assume, not having read the book. This is one of Iyer’s closing thoughts: “The largest split across the globe today is not between Islam and the West, or between China and the United States, but between cultures of the future and those of the past, often within the same country (even within the same family).”
Without mothers nearby, physically or in spirit, the connection between past and future is lost. And with it, a surfeit of love and assurance that only mothers can provide
In the Shadow of the Past
2 months ago
4 comments:
"I wonder if I lived closer to my mother if I would wake up and think “When can I get away from my mother?”"
No you would not.
She's my hero. More now than ever. And she's watching my kids this Friday night.
In 1987 our first son died and was followed by my wife's mom three months to the day. We were age 30 and 31. The missing abates but it never ends. I'm glad of that otherwise they would be largely forgotten, their impact on our lives diminished if not lost. I think of Joel when doing or seeing the most mundane things. Sometimes, not often, I feel mildly guilty that I don't think about him at the big life passages moments of our other children -- what would have been like at Joel's grad, his first date, his first job, tooth, etc. -- but the moments that I really miss him is when one of our other three children look at certain way, make a small gesture, do some very small thing or activity. Then I melt.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Thank you, Emily, for sharing your family experiences. I'd have loved to have the older generation around when my children were little...maybe it will work out someday for me to be there close by for them as the grandma.
Lucky you, Betty. She's my hero, too.
Owen, thanks for sharing YOUR story, heartbreaking as it is. A reminder of life's brevity is always a call to appreciate what life you're given.
GJ, we grew up very close to both sets of grandparents, which makes it even harder to live so far from family with my own children. Hence regular 12 hr pilgrimages a few times a year - which now will be 24 hr trips once a year, for the next couple years.
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