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Mother's Day has developed a bittersweet taste for me. The sweet comes with gratitude for the woman who gave me life; the bitterness, with re-living her loss to cancer over 30 years ago. I typically let the day come and go gently, without much fanfare. This year, however I am moved to reflect on two memorable excerpts from our mother-daughter experience.
Let's begin with peas: I grew up in Indiana in the 1950's, where much of our food came in cans. I hated the color, texture, and flavor of canned peas. I made quite a fuss about it, and that fuss made quite an impression on my mother. Some years later I discovered frozen peas, and eventually fresh ones. I have loved them ever since. Until the day she died, however, my mother insisted that I hated peas. No matter how I protested to the contrary, she made sure that they were never on our menu.
Butter is a different story: I moved to California in the late 1960's, where I lived with a weirdly wonderful mix of roommates. When mother came to visit, we threw a potluck in her honor. Everyone sat, crowded and cross-legged on the floor, balancing plates on our knees. As the butter dish passed to my mother, it tipped and the stick rolled to the floor. After a brief pause, she picked up it up, restored it to the plate, took her share, and passed it along.
After more than 30 years since her passing, I still treasure the butter story and harbor some lingering annoyance around peas. Between the two, they point to the yin and the yang of motherhood. On the one hand, our mothers have known us from the beginning. Sometimes their memories don't make room for us to grow. Our mothers' memories of our immaturity can embarrass and hold us hostage. On the other hand, our mothers also grow and change. Even a traditional, proper Midwestern mom can sit on the floor, get into the groove, and even (really?) eat butter off the floor.
As mothers, daughters, and sons we are tempted to freeze one another in some past and irretrievable time. We capture key memories, cast them in concrete, and believe that they tell it all. Mothers, daughters, and sons are also perpetual works in progress: changing, growing, surprising, exploring, and pushing the edge. As mothers, daughters, and sons we can serve not only as guardians of a shared past, but also as cheerleaders for an unlimited future.
As a daughter who lost her mother so long ago, it is easy for me to freeze her image in time. I am tempted to think I knew her, to believe my own stereotypes of what she thought and how she felt.
Sometimes, however I delight in the glimpse of her picture through fresh eyes. She not only raised me to respect and follow the rules, but she also broke with tradition and exceeded the limits of her own upbringing, and not only when it came to butter.
How do you see yourself as mother, daughter, or son? Does your love define and confine, or does it celebrate the unexpected and expand the family picture to incorporate change?
Or, is there some of both?
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