booandbunny

When I wrote about Ms. 8 last week I said “I could say about a million things about mothers and daughters here. The relationship, to me, is one of life’s most mysterious.” That was my way of not saying what I wanted to say: I have known two kinds of women in my life, those who admire their moms and those like me, who cringe at every indication that they are just like their mothers. I’ve never met someone in between. So when, after praying for a son, I was given this precious Peanut, I was more terrified than ever. I always thought I would be a better mother to a son, and so each day has been a balancing act. I try to give her the things I take from my mother and want to hold on to, which are many, actually, but I try to teach them in a different way. I grew up in a darkness I only gave name to about 10 years ago. Its genetic imprint left a red welt on my back after my babies were born. And so I feel I must explain the twist in my stomach the first time my daughter said “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”

Mom cried in church. It wasn’t an incessant, sobbing kind of crying, more of that slow tear down the cheek that turns into a steady, unstoppable stream. And, all the while, nothing behind her eyes.

Mom cried at Christmas. I must have been about 8 when I came around the corner into the living room. There, by the light of only the tree, she sat alone on the sofa crying. I would become accustomed to these Christmas Eve cries, though I never have accepted them. “My grandfather died on Christmas Eve,” she said. Well, at 8 years old I thought this was something that just happened to her, so she tried to explain that she was a little girl when he passed. I would grow into this fact over the years only to realize the power of environment on a very small child. She never knew him. But the mourning that went on around her has affected every Christmas of her life, and many of mine, too. My husband has a hard time understanding that I never knew the joy of Christmas until he came along. This year I’m trying to explain why I don’t want the family I grew up in at our house on Christmas. Perhaps it’s because I don’t want any crying in my kids’ Christmas collage.

Mom cried when she listened to music. Back then we listened to records, which some people nowadays don’t even know what they are. But there’s something about growing up with records that colors the soundtrack of your life. The crackles, pops, hisses, become part of the songs. The perfect sounds we get from our modern recordings somehow diminish the roles these imperfect recordings played in our lives. But the instant gratification of programmable music players somehow can’t diminish the prowess it took to hit that third groove on an album when all you wanted to hear was that third song. But I digress. I don’t remember seeing her dance, or tap her feet or even sing along. Music would render her motionless, perhaps staring out the window over the kitchen sink, crying with nothing behind her eyes.

Sometimes I feel moved to tears in church. I’ll listen to my daughter singing or watch my oldest son greet those around us. When our youngest was smaller, I would watch my husband keep him quiet, happy, distracted, comfortable because I didn’t have the strength to wrestle his 30-pound frame in my lap for an hour. I would see the line of hubby’s strong jaw against the fluffy tuft of 2-year-old hair and think “I really do have it all. Thank you God,” and feel tears come. I would never, ever let them fall because no one should watch their mother crying in church and wonder why.

Sometimes I am moved to tears at Christmas as I sing at the top of my voice, even when there is no other music playing. Or as I listen to the sound of the three of them lying on the floor and looking up into that unattainable, magical world that is a lit Christmas tree in a dark room. Those are the times being George Shrinks would be really cool. You could just climb up in that Christmas tree. I am moved to tears, but I would never, ever let them fall because no one should watch their mother crying at Christmas and wonder why.

Sometimes I look at the history of mothers and daughters that runs through my veins and think “There’s just no way out. There’s no avoiding it. You already are too much like her. And she’s too much like Gram. You tisk when the kids do annoying things, though you know they don’t do them out of any malice. You sigh when you don’t get your way as a means of passive control. Who are you to think you can stop the inevitable genetic destiny you and she face? Who are you to think you can break a generations-long cycle of women who pass their own depression and self-loathing on to their daughters?”

And then I see my husband’s face and I know I am not alone. And I see him in her face and know she has something I didn’t. Her dad is willing to stand up and say “Get help if you need help. I don’t care what it takes.” If my dad ever said this, my mom just never took action. But Dad is a separate bag on my luggage cart.

I see my husband’s face and I hold on to him. He who loved me even when I stopped smiling. He who loves me even when I push him away. I hold on and I pull myself up and I pull myself out because I don’t want my daughter to ever, ever come to me again as she did that day she was 2 and rub my shoulders and say: “Mommy, it’s OK. Don’t cry Mommy. It’s OK.”

This made me cry harder and it made me confess to my husband that something was wrong this time around, something after this baby wasn’t coming back together right and I needed to talk to somebody who wasn’t him, a stranger who might not be frightened by the fact that I was in a sobbing ball on the living room floor, with my toddlers staring at me and my newborn in a play yard. (This episode was something I kept from him for years.) I needed to talk to somebody, not because I was afraid I’d hurt anyone but because I was afraid I’d hate myself even more than I already did and that much hatred could never be hidden from my daughter.

That was six years ago. And I don’t cry in church and I don’t cry at Christmas and I dance when the music plays … and sometimes when it doesn’t. And my daughter looks at me and smiles and says “I want to be like you …” and for the first time in her life, I am not afraid that she feels that way.

Going on like this always seems grossly self-indulgent to me because I don’t come from a childhood that you could label as anything more than generically suburban. There was no violence or neglect or abuse or danger. It just was. I just was. So maybe that’s why I’m striving for more now … a childhood of vibrant color for my daughter so that the pictures of me in her brain are of dancing. And maybe that’s why all the writing I’ve been doing these past months, a kind of writing I bottled for so many years as I concentrated on reporting and editing, has brought me to this grossly self-indulgent moment. Because moving all this luggage out has left more space inside for me to grow into. The school bus will be here soon. I think I’ll go put my dancing shoes on.

// posted by HoBess @ 3/27/2006 03:58:00 PM