Inspired by Mariah’s piece, in which she explored Generation F with familial relationships, I examined my own relationship with my mother, as it was passed down from her mother.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”—Mom Gandhi
I come from a short line of strong women. My mother is patience incarnate. The mother before her—her own—is not. It’s one of their many differences, all of which I’ve very unscientifically cataloged in a federally unfunded case study of nature vs. nurture.
It’s my biased belief that you can make yourself into anyone. You observe, you choose, you become. A hypothesis based on nothing more than witnessing how my relationship with my mother (or, rather, hers with me) is diametrically opposed to my mother’s relationship with her mother.
It seems to be the ebb and flow of “mimic the good and eradicate the bad.” Assess, recalibrate, progress. My mother is the rock of our nuclear and extended family. She’s every emergency’s first responder and every celebration’s first RSVP. It’s the role she was ostensibly born to fill: nurturer, matriarch, glue. I didn’t know there was another way for mothers to be, and for that reason, I rely too heavily on my mother, according to my cardiologist and most ex-girlfriends whose support in moments of panic has been eschewed for the preferred phone call to my mom. It’s a relationship she set the boundaries for. My younger sister and I were always welcomed to call, text, knock, barge in. Nothing was off-limits. Nothing is off-limits.
My mother’s given me more than she’s ever gotten. The gardener to a flower she was never herself. She takes care of my sister and I because she wasn’t tended to. Her proactivity, a reaction. And it’s frustrating to know that I have it so good because she was determined to not let us inherit feelings of tension and distrust in the person you should be most comfortable around. She willfully stopped the cycle and didn’t pass along a strained relationship. She never once spoke derogatorily about my grandmother. Instead, my mother became the potting soil for the nurturing that was to come.
And I observe and choose to become her—completely. No calibration necessary.