Mothers and Daughters

My daughter is my best friend. I don’t know how that happened. We’re so different. In fact, I used to worry about my relationship with her because I thought we had nothing in common. What would happen when she grew up? How would we even talk to each other?

My son was always like me. Maybe too much like me. Growing up he always had a book in his hand. On vacation you’d find the two of us lying in hammocks all day. It was like we ate books. When he was little, night after night I read to him. We read all the Harry Potter’s. I loved those! But my daughter, she hated to read. Literally hated books. Having to do a book report was torture for her. First there was the reading, then the writing. When she’d say how miserable she was, how much she hated books, it felt personal. Like she hated me.

But I persisted, found out she liked mysteries. Read her every Nancy Drew. And I also tried to support her interests. What did she like to do? Well, she liked art. She liked to bake. But mostly she loved to go shopping. Shopping was the thing I hated the most. Malls made me queasy. I got dizzy in stores. Standing there amidst those endless rows of overpriced jeans and sweatshirts, the room would start to spin and I felt certain I would barf.

But — like how I persisted and found an author she liked, she persisted, and slowly I came to appreciate the idea of “a wardrobe.” I liked Lululemon and Bloomingdales and Nordstrom for shoes. And I enjoyed seeing her happy. But I worried. Is shopping an addiction? Is it like a drug? You get the instant gratification and then it’s gone the next minute. Is it an escape? But aren’t books kind of like that, too?

Finding a college for my daughter to go to wasn’t easy. It’s not that she wasn’t smart or didn’t have good grades, but what kind of college exists for kids who don’t like books? Who hate to read? Also, the school had to be prestigious and it had to be aesthetically pleasing, like the way she organizes her closet — by color, pants first, then skirts, then dresses — the campus, the classrooms and dorms had to be laid out in a way that was pleasing to the eye. “It’s not important how a college looks!” I wanted to scream, and maybe once or twice I did. But to her it was.

When we found WashU in St. Louis, it was like her perfect place: they had an undergrad business program, an art school, there was even a fashion major and the campus was modeled after Oxford and Cambridge. “Dorms are like palaces,” the college guidebook said. But when she got there, it wasn’t so perfect. There were still requirements in the Arts & Sciences. “I have to read books and discuss them. They call on you!” She exclaimed on the phone, distraught. “And those beautiful buildings, turns out everything is fake!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The buildings look pretty, but they’re copies of pretty things. They’re like Grandma’s Louis Vuitton purses. Trust me,” she said. “Everything is fake.”

It was a hard year. I kept thinking, should she transfer? But where would she go? I set my clock for five am, so I’d be up and ready to talk on her walk to her eight o’clock class. She called me or Face-timed me every day. I helped her with her papers, and somehow, during all those talks and Face-time sessions, and weekends when I visited the school — family weekend in the fall, sorority weekend in the spring — we really bonded.

It was Mother’s Day when she finished her first year. She wrote me a card on the plane. “So many of my friends at school hate their parents,” she wrote. “But you’re my best friend.”

I cried…because I felt the same way. Now she’s off for her sophomore year and things are so much better. So much better. I don’t have to set my clock any more to be on St. Louis time. I still get calls and Face-time requests, but she’s reporting happy things. I have time to read now. It’s funny. But I miss shopping.