Excerpt
A Mother Like Mine: A Daughter Like Me
A Memoir by Amber Lea Starfire
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
"You're just like your mother."
For most of my adult life, those words were insults. Fighting words, hurled contemptuously at me in moments of anger by my boyfriend, husband, child, or someone else close to me. The dart always hit home.
Memory is a funny thing. We base the stories of our lives — and build our identities — upon the intangibility of this fog of a thing, taking our mind's images of past events as recorded facts. It is from the memories of my life experiences that I frame my world view. It is from these same memories that I formed and internally framed a timeless picture of my mother.
Why should being like my mother be such a bad thing? In spite of her alcoholic and clinically depressed parents, my mother had insisted on making her own way in life, on getting a college education in an age when women were expected to get married instead, and on saving money for her own financial security. She persisted throughout her life to provide herself with the sense of safety missing in her childhood home. Ahead of her time in many ways, she took pride in her own pioneer spirit and heritage. She would seem to be a mother to be admired and emulated, not the opposite.
When I was young, I idolized my mother and wanted to be just like her: vivacious, attractive, intelligent, like a movie star in the red gown she wore when she went dancing with my father. Sometimes she would take me with her to the high school where she taught English. I remember sitting in the back of the classroom envying the students as I watched her interact with them, my heart swelling with the pride of association. I wanted to get up and shout, "That's my mom!" I even wrote an essay in fifth grade saying that when I grew up, I wanted to be a teacher and have five children, just like my mother. Then I grew old enough to need — and to see — my mother in a different way.
I had always imagined that mothers were supposed to be like friends. You could tell them your deepest secrets and they would hold them for you. You could come to them with your problems and ask for advice. They would be all wise and able to give the best advice, like the mothers in the television shows of that time — the good women who wore pearls while vacuuming and whose only desires were to be good mothers and housewives.
My mother, however, was as far from that housewifely stereotype as it as possible to be. She and my father divorced when I was eight. When I was twelve, she was working full time as a teacher, going to school in the evenings and studying for her Ph.D in psychology. She counseled groups of students, attended seminars and workshops, and dated. And dated. After twenty years of marriage, she was fully consumed with spreading her own wings, "finding herself," and putting ads in single magazines. I felt inconsequential, hardly a blip on the radar of her consciousness.
Perhaps that's what hurt so much. My mother, so absorbed in her work, classes, and her writing life, seemed unaware of me — certainly unaware of my feelings. When I argued with her about something, which I'm sure I did often, she would say "That's just your perception." Perhaps, as a psychologist in training, she thought that she was validating my viewpoint. But to me, she was, with that one, four-word phrase, wiping me out of existence. I felt erased somehow; these were only my perceptions, thoughts, and opinions, and they didn't matter. They weren't real, just a child's made- up view of the world. I supposed she thought that only her perceptions of life were worthy of attention, and I felt angry.
Some of her attitude may simply have been cultural. Those were the days when children weren't really considered fully human until they were old enough to take care of themselves. Once, she took me with her on a date with some new man she had met through the personal ads. (She did this from time-to-time as a form of protection for herself.) He took us to the movies, to see "Last Tango in Paris." I was twelve. I watched in open-eyed shock as Paul (Marlon Brando), brutally and anally raped Jeanne (Maria Schneider) several times during the movie. As we left the theater, I felt off-balance, scared. Was this what sex was like? I had questions I wanted to ask, but didn't know how to ask them. My mother's only comment: "What beautiful photography!" We never talked about what I had seen or how I felt about it.
My mother expressed confidence that we would bounce back from whatever we experienced in our young lives, and that whatever we didn't understand wouldn't hurt us. If she didn't want to deal with something, she could simply pretend it didn't happen; she was positive that we would soon forget about it.
I languished under her disregard — perhaps it would be better to say denial — of my needs and sensibilities. Every once in a while I would tentatively reach out for some understanding or affection. But there was none to be had — not the kind I was looking for, anyway — and I soon crawled back into my shell. Anything I shared with her of my inner life, my feelings, hopes and dreams, she would shamelessly repeat (with her particular spin) to anyone who was willing to listen: family members, friends, students, even complete strangers. I felt humiliated when she would thoughtlessly blurt out something I had divulged to her in a moment of trusting vulnerability. And, she would do it in such a way as to make what I had said appear as something silly, not to be taken seriously. When I complained to her that she had told something that was supposed to be just between her and me, she said, "Oh, you know I don't believe in secrets. Why do you care what anyone else thinks?" When I grew older and refused to tell her what was on my mind, she accused me of being a "private person," as if holding things to myself was morally wrong.
An event occurred when I was fourteen that epitomizes the communication divide between us. I had been sexually active, was late for my period, and feared that I was pregnant. Even then, I was in the habit of writing my feelings and thoughts in a journal, and I wrote about my situation. A few days later, I started my period. Relieved, I ripped the incriminating page from my journal, tore it into tiny little bits and threw it into the trash can.
When I arrived home from school that afternoon, my mother and brothers were in the living room, waiting for me. Like unsuspecting prey, I walked straight into the trap. My mother pounced, almost before I was in the door. Holding aloft my precious journal page, a thin jigsaw puzzle of tattered binder paper and tape, she demanded, "What's this?"
Standing there, in front of my smirking brothers, my mother brandished this piece of my secret self like a weapon. I stammered. I tried to explain. I was no longer worried that I was pregnant, but the damage was done. I was emotionally flayed, my inner world hung out to dry among the wolves, and there was nothing I could do about it.
All the while, standing accused in the middle of the living room, ears ringing with humiliation and anger, my mind whirled with questions: "Why couldn't you just come to me and ask? Why are you doing this to me?" This betrayal, from going into my room and snooping to exposing me in front of my enemy brothers (enemies, because they tortured me both physically and emotionally on an almost daily basis) was probably the moment hate settled itself in my heart.
From that day on, I made of point of declaring that I was nothing like my mother. I would be different. I would grow up to be the kind of mother who respected her children's privacy, who cared what they felt, and who would be there to listen to them when they needed her.
Roll forward a few years, to the early teens of my own children, my divorce from their father after 18 years of marriage, my own seeking of self. I have vivid memories of their sullenness, anger, judgment, overt criticism, and their desire for me to somehow be different than who I was. Sometimes it seemed that I could do nothing right. I could only put my feelings on hold and wait patiently for them to grow up and come around. I tried to imagine what I was like as a teenager, as seen by my mother. She used to say that I was a "truly horrible," teenager, but of course I don't remember it that way. I only remember that one day my mother suddenly became unreasonable, demanding, and unavailable. Did my children see me the same way?
Though we always held the required family holiday gatherings, I continued to battle with my mother, and refused to open my heart to her in any way, until probably my late thirties or early forties. then, something subtle shifted, like sand beneath the foundation of a house, and the walls of my resistance began to crack. As my own children rebelled and found ways to hate me, understanding and compassion for my mother took root. And the hatred I'd harbored for so long, gradually dissolved until I could see it for what it was — unresolved pain.
I looked at my mother with fresh eyes and, in some ways, it was like looking in a mirror. We'd both been emotionally neglected. We'd both wanted more from our mothers and been disappointed. And we'd both managed to pull ourselves up, become strong women with independent minds, and provide for ourselves what our mothers had lacked. I resolved to become for my mother what she had never been for me — a friend, a confidant, someone who cares. After that, I called often, helped her with her new computer, brought pictures of the kids, and sat and listened to her worn out stories.
When her memory began to unravel and before I had to move her to an assisted-living facility, I traveled 300 miles each week just to do her grocery shopping, open cans, clean her house, and arrange for neighbors to check on her daily. In the end, I moved her close and visited every day. As she declined, she no longer knew who I was, recognizing me only as the woman who took her on walks. She passed away in May of 2007.
Memory is a funny thing. Now, when someone says to me, "You're just like your mother," I think of all the ways that's true, and smile.