“I see you’re wearing your hair long again,” she says to me across the table, with a raise of her eyebrows.
I nod as I pick at my salad, and hope she drops the subject.
“Is that so you can pull it up in that, you know, messy sort of way?”
Ah, and there it is.
When she saw me for the first time in over a year, just a few hours earlier, she remarked, “Are those new earrings?”
Not “those are cute” or “I like your earrings.”
My 81-year old mother is making a veiled comment about my spending.
I get it. I get it. God knows, I get it.
We know this dance with our mothers, don’t we?
Our relationships are like a dance; sometimes painful, often joyful but in almost every case, we know the music we’re moving to, we accept the back and the forth, and poignantly experience the embrace and the letting go.
We take our mother’s hands when we’re young and learn the steps, the twists, the dips and the lifts until eventually, we can move on our own. We may change the music and even switch the style, but the initial memory and years of practicing with and observing her remain with us for life.
My oldest daughter just gave birth to twins, Lucy and Jack, and I’m writing this from my daughter’s kitchen table in the wee hours of the morning. I can hear the babies grunting and starting to fuss through the monitor nearby.
So, here I am in the dance, still bristling at some of the things my mother says, yet a mother and grandmother myself.
My “baby” is mothering her two newborns as well as two older daughters, as I cook meals and hold and burp alongside her. I rock the infants to sleep. I swaddle them.
The memory of my mother visiting me each time I had a child is right at the surface of my psyche. She helped me get past postpartum blues after my first was born. Years later, after my first son was born, she’d comb and curl both my daughters’ hair. It’s funny that a straight part and ribbons in their hair helped me rest easy. I’d return to my bed after a hot shower and she’d replaced my bedding. Can you relate to how refreshing it feels to slide into clean, cool sheets when you’re exhausted and have just washed off breast milk spills and baby burps?
I’m trying to give these comforts and help to my daughter now. I wonder at how fast the dance has moved.
My mother is frail now, ravaged by rheumatoid arthritis and age. I placed Lucy in her arms the other night and her face lit up. When the twins have gained weight in a few short months, my mother won’t be able to hold her great-grandchildren. As it is, the baby had to be set in her arms and lifted away, but for those moments she held Lucy, it was heavenly; for her and for me, watching.
“I wonder what they’re thinking,” she mused as she looked into her great-granddaughter’s eyes.
I know what I was thinking. That for all her picking and jabbing and what feels to me like a lot of negativity, she’s still my mother. She’s still out there ahead of me in life, working her way through the trials of aging, and not so long ago she was a young mother herself, holding and burping and rocking and loving her babies, who grew into mothers and fathers, who had babies of their own, who have grown into mothers and fathers themselves, and so it goes.
We step onto the dance floor, we twirl and twist and move and spin to the music that’s playing until, at some point, we rest on the sidelines to mostly watch and enjoy those we’ve taught.
My mother lacks the physical stamina she once had but I hear her instruction clearly and figuratively feel her maternal embrace.
And damned if she wasn’t right – yes, I’m wearing my hair long again so I can pull it up in butterfly clips on bad hair days because it’s easier, and yes, my earrings are new. But I wasn’t going to give her that – I do, after all, have to play my part as the daughter in this dance.
If not, we’d stumble and fall. It’s the dance we know.
© Barbara Albright
Barbara Albright is a writer and photographer, currently freed from a house and its trappings, traveling the country in an RV, capturing beauty and nuances wherever the road leads. She blogs at The Empty Nest Mom about how full life is when the nest is empty; at Bring the Monkey about fiber arts and quilt shops she discovers in her travels, and she is a regular contributor at Vision and Verb; an international community of women.
Part 7 in a series of essays on mother-daughter relationships. Read more of the Mother Daughter Series here.
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D.A. – I’m so glad you asked me to contribute to this series. It’s been a delight to read the posts so far and an honor to write about my mother.
One of the benefits of aging, I suspect, is that it gives us the objectivity that would have saved us soooo much time and energy that was expended on “dwelling on things” when we were younger. Hence, your tolerance of your mother’s not-so-veiled criticism and your ability to see things through her eyes. Your love for and understanding of this woman comes shining through. A beautiful piece. Thank you!
I’m glad the love came through, Judith, and yes to the many benefits of aging.
“Ah, and there it is.”
Oh, how I can relate to the extraordinary mix of emotions in that seemingly simple remark. Resignation. Disappointment. A trigger to a lifetime in which love comes in a form that isn’t easy to process. Yet it’s got to be amazing to place your new grandchild(ren) in their great-grandmother’s arms. And a wonderful gift for her as well.
Thank you for sharing these moving moments in this lovely essay, Barbara.
Yes, D.A., family can pull triggers and push buttons like no one else, can’t they? I think especially our mothers.
It’s funny, Barb, but I was just talking to a friend about exactly that. Our mothers more than anyone else seem to push buttons, and often in ways that others would never notice. Naturally, we do… And we love them anyway.
LOVELY!!
Thank you Carol – always love hearing from you.
Navigating the stings of comments with grace, and stepping back to see the whole picture and where everyone fits in. Very nice.
It’s the stepping back and taking a deep breath that works for me, when it works, Lunaboogie. Have you seen the movie Chocolat? I adore the main character’s (Vianne -the chocolatier) way of handling the snipes and barbs from the villagers. Ah, I often hope to myself, to have that kind of grace.
Thank you for your kind remark.
A graceful sharing of the dance we all know far too well. Thank you for sharing the big picture so eloquently. It encourages me to look beyond the negativity with my own mother and embrace the big picture — and hope that my own daughters can and will do the same with the traits they perceive as negative (or overbearing…overprotective…overMOTHERing) in me.
Isn’t that the truth, Lisa? Spending these few weeks like I have with my daughter and her new twins – I realize it’s a balancing act, isn’t it? Wanting to share advice, wanting to help, but knowing as a mother of grown children – we have to take a step back to keep peace. Mostly I just try to love, love, love and hope that comes through. 😉
Love this. It’s so true. The mother-daughter relationship can be fraught with such mixed emotions. You’ve captured them all beautifully.
I suppose whenever there is such bonding and day to day, year by year interaction, there’s bound to be mixed emotions as we pull away, find our own way, let loose and recoil. Mixed emotions, indeed, and I think it becomes us as daughters to love and honor them in spite of and because of who they are and what they’ve given us (life really), and find that balance of not having to put up with or accept the criticism. It becomes, as adults, a mutual respect, or it disintegrates.
What was most touching to me was that although your mom is critical of you now, you still have all those wonderful memories of how she helped you out when you were at the same phase of life as your daughter is now. How poignant.
Do we make allowances for them, Tammy, because they’re aging and dealing with all that frustration at the inability to do the things they once had the strength for? Do we wonder if perhaps dementia is showing an ugly head? I don’t know. Because I haven’t walked in those shoes, I just choose to remember all that she’s done. Don’t we all do that with our parents as they age?
Barbara, I was very touched by your writing and this piece. I have never read anything of yours before and I agree with many of the comments above. I do want to say though that I think that some mothers and daughters who really work at it get to move beyond that “dance” as you describe it. Some aren’t capable, or maybe one of the pair isn’t. Those who are benefit incredibly. Obviously you have handled your particular situation well – and joyfully.
Thank you for your comment Margaret. It DOES take two to complete the dance, doesn’t it? Or does it? We can dance and twirl on our own also – finding joy because of or in spite of our mother’s influence.
A very honest and insightful look into a mother’s relationship with her own mother. I love seeing the ways a lifetime of family comes through the bonding of time. Sometimes it’s through challenges that teach us about ourselves and others, while other times it’s through the joy and realization that our family (hopefully) is always there to care for us when we need them most. 🙂
The good and the bad, the bitter and the sweet, are all there in familial ties. I suppose we all do the best we can in the end.
Barbara,
I love the way you portrayed the mother-daughter relationship – a complicated mess of love, respect, criticism, and compromise. The weaving of the dance imagery worked well. We must keep rotating our own stance as the “dance” changes. Thanks so much for sharing this realistic and honest portrayal of motherhood.