Confessions of a mother

There are thousands of quotations about the very special bond between mothers and daughters—all lies. My favorite lie is: “Daughters are angels sent from above to fill our hearts with love.” This liar didn’t even have the courage to put a name on the quote—it’s by the ever-cowardly Anonymous.

None of these pure-angel sayings reveal the truly terrifying, intense, crazy, seismic nature of the relationship, which also happens to be filled with fierce love and devotion.

My husband says he is scared of my daughter and me. He has no idea how we can go from screaming and crying one minute to hugging and kissing each other and saying how much we love each other the next. Whenever he questions us like that, we look at him like he’s crazy.

It can’t help that we’re both swimming in a hormonal swamp of epic proportions, which would send even the bravest man running for the hills. Still, I refuse to believe that the intensity of our feelings and reactions to each other is completely hormonal. No, I believe it is unique to the mother-daughter relationship—and has been for thousands of years. Cave mothers and daughters probably rocked the cave, and cavemen and sons went hunting just to avoid all the yelling.

In her book, You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters In Conversation, linguistic expert Deborah Tannen says, “The power that mothers and daughters hold over each other derives in part from their closeness...the struggle is especially intense.” I played Deborah in the play she wrote about her family, so I got to feel that struggle—at least on stage.

And then it was my turn. I admit I was a little afraid when I found out we were having a girl. OK, a lot afraid. We already had our son, who was a Zen Buddha of a baby—the complete opposite of my husband and me. He would sit for hours just contemplating the world, and you wouldn’t hear a peep. But given the intensity of the parental gene pools, I was certain this couldn’t happen twice. Add a certain set of hormones to that mix and I knew I was in for some trouble.

When the wise women of the “village” learned I was having a girl, they said, “Oh Sweetheart, boys love their mothers, but daughters...”.But daughters what? They couldn’t really explain it, but they were right—daughters are different than sons, and not just the body parts.

As it happened, my daughter was different from my son from the very beginning. She started squirming in the womb (no serene contemplation with this one). And right after she came out, I swear she tried to climb up my shoulder.

I was bigger than her, so for a while I had the upper hand. But not for long. While my son remains a flow-boy slowly going through life and figuring it out as he goes, my daughter always knew what she wanted. And she wasn’t afraid to get it.

Now, at 14, she’s definitely her own person. She does so many things I would never do (like sports) and has so many talents I don’t have (like art) that sometimes I ask myself, “Where did she come from?” My sister and I often say our daughters somehow switched mothers right before birth.My sister is an amazing artist, creative and crafty. And my daughter can spend hours in the basement making art just for fun. One birthday she asked for a small sewing machine to make her own handbags. I don’t even know how to sew a button on, and my niece would much rather buy a Prada handbag than make one. My sister and my daughter are both shy in crowds while I’ve never met a crowd I didn’t like. And my niece, after owning the womb, was owning the room from day one.

But I suppose it’s because of our differences that my daughter continually amazes me. She’s incredibly industrious. She can bake for hours, and she turned her love of baking into her own business. Last year she made 250 cupcakes at the end of the school year to sell at a local winery. Who knew cupcakes were a great accompaniment to wine?

She’s also fiercely interested in fairness. If someone is wronged at school, she’s the first one to notice and say something out loud. Watching her learn about the world and its inequities, I can see her moral compass forming. Last year, as a charitable project, she worked on buying backpacks for the girls of the new charter school, Young Women’s College Prep. But she realized that there wouldn’t be enough for all the girls, and they wouldn’t have their own daily agenda book. So she raised enough money not only for all the backpacks, but she also used her own money to purchase the agenda books for all 79 girls.

She’s also an incredibly fierce and loyal friend. When she came of “American Girl age,” she never wanted the star American Girl; she wanted the star’s best friend. And despite her shyness in crowds, she’s great at making one-on-one friends with anyone. She collects pen pals from hotel pools we’ve visited around the world.

It’s probably the ways my daughter and I are the same that causes most of the drama in our house. She’s an intense perfectionist who likes everything in its place. (Who me?) She loves to be uber-organized and says she can’t study without being organized. When she studies, she makes index cards for her index cards. She loves to control everyone around her—including her brother, father, and me. You know the saying, “If momma no happy then nobody happy”? In our house, we just substitute my daughter’s name. Sometimes I have to remind her, “Hey, I’m the mother!”

More often than not, we have a blast together. But now that she’s well into adolescence, it can be hard to enjoy being her mother in the thick of all the huffing, puffing, and eye-rolling. The exasperated “Mom!” that emanates from her mouth would send anyone into lifelong therapy. She’s embarrassed about almost anything and everything I do—even things I wouldn’t have found embarrassing when I was her age.

Of course, my mother didn’t write a column where daily life could be fodder.“You can’t write that!” is a common phrase in our household. But I can barely talk without hearing, “Mom, I can’t believe you said that.” Or a recent favorite: “You did not just tell my coaches that you hate the assault of emails you receive from them. Just don’t talk!” But,” I argue back, “it is an assault. She replies, “MOOOOOMMMMMM.”

I just don’t remember being as embarrassed of my mother when I was a teenager. That didn’t happen until I was in my 30s when she started telling me how to be a mother. I’m not sure who rolled her eyes more at the time: me or her. She loved to point out the craziness of all our new-fangled parenting—things like bedtimes, scheduled naps, too much breastfeeding, and those crazy timeouts. In response, I would argue, “MOOOOOMMMMMM.” (Oh, wait a minute...).

As intense as my relationship is with my daughter right now, I at least know what to expect from the other side. And that’s the relationship I now have with my 82-year-old mother. Yes, she can be exasperating. But there’s no eye-rolling because we truly and deeply enjoy and respect each other for who we are as women, mothers, and wives.

I can only hope that someday, my little huffing, eye-rolling, perfectionist, control freak, equal-justice fighter, artist, and cupcake baker will feel the same way. Here’s a new quote to add to those anonymous ones about mothers and daughters. You can even put my name on it: “Your daughter is your daughter until the day you die, so buckle up—and enjoy the ride.” Happy Mother’s Day to me and all of you out there who are raising daughters.