My Mother and Me: A Relationship Evolved
Time is our ally.
***Trigger Warning: stillbirth, miscarriage***
I just got back from my first post-COVID-19-vaccination trip to see my Mom. She’s 89. It has been over a year since I last saw her face to face. I was busy trying to Zoom teach effectively and, well — she is 89. I missed her. She missed me.
Mom and I have had a complicated relationship. But it has evolved in the last few years. It has had the time to mature and become a sweet one. She is so much more than ‘my mother;’ she is a woman navigating the world that has changed so rapidly during her lifetime.
My mother had a difficult childhood. She was born in April 1932 in a small town in Vermont. Her mother was a young bride. She had come from wealth, as my great grandfather was a co-creator of a well-known New Hampshire carriage business. According to my mom, they did not approve of my working-class grandfather.
My grandparents were, therefore, essentially cut off from her parents. It didn’t matter. My grandparents were deeply in love. They wed, and soon they became pregnant with their daughter, my mother. Things were sweet.
My grandmother died about a week after my mother was born from sepsis. She was only 20. I believe my grandfather harbored a grudge against my mom, the newborn who (he believed) cost him the love of his life.
He remarried quickly. My stepmother disliked my mother. Mom was only ever allowed to call her stepmother by her first name. At age five, my mother was sent to live with her aunt and uncle. Her father and stepmother raised two other children, and my mother lived with her aunt and uncle until she finished school.
How sad to never be able to call anyone “Mom” as a child.
Mom became a dental hygienist and moved about an hour away to live on her own. She loved her newfound freedom. She was set up on a blind date, and that suitor was my father. I don’t think my mother had many other suitors. She doesn’t say.
Mom and Dad married and they moved from the Northeast United States to the Midwest for Dad’s work. She always found a job wherever we lived.
Mom gave birth to three daughters, with me being the youngest.
My parents’ first daughter was stillborn. The most tragic thing is that my parents knew about seven and a half months into the pregnancy that the girl’s umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, strangling her. The medical wisdom at the time decreed that Mom needed to carry to term and deliver.
They had to provide a name for her death certificate. They named her after my mother’s mother. How morbidly appropriate, no?
I can’t imagine how Mom must have felt knowing that the child inside her womb was dead, yet it was still in utero. I don’t know what the current wisdom is, but that just seems cruel and unnecessary. She was advised to become pregnant again as soon as possible.
My older sister is special needs. She is currently in a home, is well taken care of, and exactly where she needs to be. In addition to working full-time, my mother shouldered a lot of the emotional burden of my sister’s care. It is stressful dealing with a child who is physically, emotionally, and mentally delayed.
Then there was me, the latchkey kid.
I can be a difficult person to be around, especially when I was younger. I was — I am — a younger version of my mom. Stubborn. Temperamental. Quick to anger and slow to forgive. Passionate. Curious. These traits are all part of who we are.
I like to think I am much nicer to be around now. So is my mom. Age may breed wisdom, but it sure breeds patience. Perhaps the slowness of patience is the root of wisdom. With patience, you can cultivate calmness. Calmness is a superpower to see things more clearly.
My mom will be the first to tell you she was an angry woman. I believe she was overwhelmed, didn’t know how to ask for help, and believed her feelings were invalid. I think she resented my sister, and in turn, felt guilty about resenting my sister.
She internalized this guilt, and the guilt she was dealt for the passing of her mother and the rejection of her father, and this has taken years and years to sort out. And now, she has found peace. She is content.
Mom was married to my father for 59 years until his death a few years ago. Theirs was a traditional marriage; she did all of the cleaning and the day-to-day duties, and he handled the financials.
Somewhere along the way she became convinced that she wasn’t smart enough to understand budgeting. Her intelligence was always a touchy subject with her. She has gained confidence by learning to do things for herself after Dad died, including the financial business.
I worry about my mom.
She lives so far away and has had various health problems in the past few years. I have asked her to come and live with me, but I know she never will. There is no talking my mother into something she doesn’t want to do. She has a long-term care plan in place and a network of supportive friends and neighbors.
I am thankful that we have lived long enough to have a good relationship. It has been hard-won. We fought a lot when I was in my twenties and thirties. We were two angry, depressed people who took our pains out on each other, and when it became too much we stopped speaking.
In my twenties, I actively suffered from anorexia. One summer, I visited them. My parents were forced to hospitalize me. It felt like betrayal. I refused to speak to them in depth for several years after that. I isolated myself. I lived halfway across the country anyway and didn’t come to visit during holidays. It was a rough time for everyone.
Time has allowed our relationship to mend together.
But here’s the weird thing: our history no longer matters. The only thing that matters is the time we can spend together now. As Gretchen Rubin wrote, “The days are long, but the years are short.” The days were long at my Mom’s house this visit. Her lack of mobility and energy kept us at her house for the most part.
But that’s more than okay. I treasured taking her out to lunch, then coming home and binging Netflix. I was able to spend time with my Mom. I still get to call her “Mom.”
I am glad to be able to grow old with her. As I tackle the throes of menopause, she tackles the throes of old age. My mother looks towards her future, eager to continue to learn and become who she always was. She persists. She is my mother and mentor.
Sarah Lou is a writer of many things. Besides the articles on Medium, she has written and published good plays and bad poetry. She is also a college professor, animal lover, actor, director, potter, and pandemic ukulele student. You can see more of her life at https://www.instagram.com/sarahlouhoog/
