Mothers and daughters

I think this is fitting for today.  I love my mom and am so happy she is here to celebrate this day with as I know others have lost their moms recently. We only all have this day.

We all have one so on some level we all relate to mothers. My mother was my first female influence, my first love. She set the groundwork of all future relationships I was to have with females and males. As a child I looked to my mom for all I needed; love, nurturing, guidance, lessons in how to be female in the world and thus how to love, nurture and guide others. My first memory involves my mom, her telling me in a sweet voice, with love in her heart for me that I still feel on a cellular level, to go see what she had for me in a drawer in my bedroom. It was a red and green stuffed horse she had made for me, a gift to give up my sookie for. I was four years old. What a wonderful first memory to have. My mom gave me advice when I was a young mother. On all she could she offered her wisdom, most I ignored or at worst didn't appreciate, and I always felt welcomed in the home of my youth with my children. To mind comes a time when I was carrying my first child Justin, seven months pregnant, severely depressed and turning 21, she made me come over to her house for my cake when I didn't want to. It was a most beautifully decorated cake with silver beads and buttercream icing. A soothing salve for a suffering mom to be. I have the picture, it both destroys me (to see the pain I went through) and uplifts me (that cake made with love for me). I knew my mom loved me. I still do.

Relationships with mothers can be fraught with angst and emotional land mines, and I believe more so relationships between mothers and daughters. Who else do we need to hear our pleas and have a more heartfelt need for love from, than the first person we had a relationship with - one that started from the moment we as an infant gazed upon them at our birth? Who do we need to understand and accept us more than our mothers? I feel home when my mom understands and gets me, when she has heard me and accepts who I am unconditionally.  I have more and more moments like this with my mom now that I am approaching a time when I realize my mom will not be around forever anymore - like I once used to pray for as a little child.  As I face my mom's mortality, as we both age, I clutch onto these little gem connections, these moments that touch my heart. She does not know this is happening, most times I remain silent taking it in, not disturbing the feeling with words unable to express it's relevance. She does not know that my consciousness just filed away a little piece of her for safe keeping, for when I will need it after she is gone. I am relieved the hard times are over between us, those times we were apart, those times I didn't appreciate her sacrifices and love for me.

Life being one of those full circle kind of things, as a mom myself I have seen the look of love on my girls faces when I "get them" that instant well of tears, that hitch in the heart and the look of acknowledgement between our eyes that connects. For me it is a connecting of that infant child bond from way back when I carried their soul in mine like a beautiful secret.  These connections usually happen over little things, a phrase, a hug, a small gesture of help. These sweet spots of life that keep mother and daughter relationships strong and deep, I treasure as much as the ones between me and my own mom. I have also seen the pain and hurt on their faces, in their eyes when I miss the mark and that bond is temporarily broken. Last night my daughter mentioned something in passing about what she hoped for and needed from me and did not get, it felt like my heart was shredding.  She does not know this feeling because she is not a mother, she without the responsibility and burden of a charge, knows not what I felt. Again I could not express my sorrow enough, so I remained silent. Instead I take these lessons in and hold them close hopeful I can move forward without failing her again.

As a daughter I have spent much of my life trying to break from the mother daughter bond and become an independent being. The love hate struggle that peaks in teenage years, settles in midlife and comes around to it's beginnings when I see her age and I start to mother her now. As a mother, I now watch my daughters doing it, the dance of pull and push, grasp and release. I yearn to do it all correctly yet all the while not knowing what is correct. Do I grasp or do I let go?  I grieve for the sorrow my daughters go through, their pain I feel, it keeps me awake tossing at night. I want to make it right for them to prevent them from feeling the bad and I cannot. They will have to find their way in their own time, me the watcher. I am present but removed in that I can't make them learn a lesson they have to learn, here mine being the lesson of restraint. It is painful to watch, like the mother duck I saw online waiting for her ducklings to be rescued from a storm drain, powerless to pull them out of the swirl. I can only hold when they want to be held, enfold my arms around them and kiss their foreheads tell them I love them, I am here, I will help.

Today in this strange land of mother daughter bonds I find my footsteps retracing from her to them, from them to me and back to her again.