Monday, May 14, 2007 Cole: Of mothers and daughters By Eldred Cole Shespeak
"How are we to be the mothers we want our daughters to have, if we are still sorting out who our own mothers are and what they mean to us?," Letty Cottin Pogrebin
WHEN you're at the age of gullibility, let us say, about three, she's a goddess. You try to emulate her. You smear your face with her lipstick and model her earrings and high heels, wanting to be just like Mama.
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That's the way it is until you reach the age of adolescence, when she suddenly becomes the most ignorant, benighted, out-of-touch creature on the planet and you can't get far enough away from her.
Your primary form of interaction for the next five years or so will be a single word, "Mom!" or "Ma!" or "Nay!" or whatever name you call her screamed or whined in many different ways.
And then, somewhere between your twenties and your thirties or better still your menopausal age, if you're lucky or both of you are still alive, she becomes your best friend again.
It is a fact that many women have difficult relationships with their mothers and when they became mothers themselves, with their daughters, even when they want good relationships.
A mother may wish her daughters happiness, yet - from the point of view of her daughter - she acts quite the opposite. A mother may describe her daughter's choices as failures, criticizing hairstyle, college, clothes and friends, relationships and lifestyle.
A mother may advise her daughter to be realistic by preparing for an unfulfilling life in the future - while giving very different messages to her sons.
Mothers and daughters aren't always best friends, not even Lorelei and Rory of the TV show "Gilmore Girls" are all the time.
The common conflict in the adult mother-daughter relationship most often arise over one very basic question: "Will the mother accept the daughter as an adult? That means, when she's visiting you or staying with you, does she let you run your house?
Does she trust you to be independent on small issues as well as large---who are you with, what's your sexuality, where do you work, how do you spend your money?
Letting the daughter be her own woman is a universal issue between mothers and daughters.
My relationship with my mother undoubtedly remains one of the most uneasy ones in my life. From the earliest days when I must have been a blinkered and precocious child (precisely the kind of kid I find most irritating!) my mother and I have had the kind of stormy relationship that one should more reasonably have with other people, not one's own mother.
Most of those childhood years, I've been busy blaming my mother or wishing that I could "divorce" her, when upon reaching the age of maturity, I realized that I was caught in a psychological prison.
I can't get free, and I can't really grow up. But Filipino culture dictates that the responsibility of taking care of ageing parents falls on the youngest or the remaining single member of the family. So I ended up having the custody of my mother with me.
Such cultural practice upset my sense of justice. I am not her only child, why should I end up with her?
I was caught in a maelstrom of trying to be a good daughter by having my mother with me or trying to be a good person by having a life that I choose.
Having that goal and at the same time living with my mother, boy, that is one marriage doomed from the beginning.
Luckily, my sisters who are now mothers with daughters understood my plight, for they also had the same relationship with our mother.
We devised various creative ways to make our mother's life as comfortable and as enjoyable as it unfolds. Hoping that it will show her that in spite of everything we love her way children should love their parents.
But parents, especially mothers, are not always aware of what kind of pain they cause when they cling to their child.
Nevertheless, there is no relationship quite as primal as the one between a mother and her daughter. You see, it's the original relationship, and it's also a relationship that has been sentimentalized but not honored.
Women grow up and then their energy is largely turned toward men, but the original love relationship is with a mother. And it started upon conception, and will last until death.
If we as daughters don't acknowledge that, we're closing ourselves off from a great source of power and fulfillment and understanding of ourselves.
For mothers: please accept your children as unique human beings, be aware of the passing years - let your children grow up and do not expect your children to change for your comfort.
To quote Kahlil Gibran”s "The Prophet": Your children are not your children, They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself, they come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit even in your dreams."
