My mother was here for Easter and it was great to see her interact with my daughter.
What wasn’t great was this feeling of discomfort that I get around her, which seems to be more pronounced now that I have a daughter. I have this pent up anger and resentment that I don’t know how to let go of. There is no point to it and I am the only one hanging on to it. My mother did the best that she could and I have no doubt that she loves me. It pains me now more than ever because I never want my daughter to have these feelings toward me. I don’t want a complicated difficult relationship with my daughter. I want an easy loving one. I know it won’t always be easy, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as it has been for my mother and me.
I hate ever saying anything that sounds negative or critical of the people I love because it’s unfair and it paints a distorted picture. I do not want a different mother. I love and admire my mother tremendously. I am blessed to have her in my life, but neither one of us is perfect.
Even with these unsettling feelings, my mother told me this was the best visit she has ever had and that I seem more grounded. I think it’s because I am finally fully aware of what is going on inside of me and instead of lashing out I am letting myself acknowledge the feelings and realizing that I am not upset about anything that is happening NOW, I am upset about things that can not be changed in the past.
In the NOW, I actually have the mother that I have always wanted. She is supportive and she does her best to try and hear me. I did not have that then, but I have it now and for some reason I am resisting what I have always wanted. For example she kept asking me to read something in a magazine she brought and I didn’t want to. She asked me various times and finally I asked her why she wanted me to read it so badly and she said, “Porque pone en palabras lo que no se decirte (Because it puts in words what I do not know how to say to you).” It was a mother’s prayer and it was beautiful. I am a better person for having read it. It asked for guidance on being a good mother and knowing how to celebrate your children and make them feel loved.
She is a good mother, she is not perfect. I want to be a good mother, I am not perfect. She did the best she could, I will do the best I can. Wish me luck.
This is very true, I think of all mothers from more or less that era. I think things were just generally different then: Woman got married and had kids younger, men were less interactive with their kids, woman were in charge of the household which basically meant men did not give as much support as they give now. The idea of marriage, of having kids, of what kids should do and how one should treat them, all these things were different back then.
Our generation has a chance to change things. Not that I would chance myself, meaning I would not change my childhood. But things are different now, we get to change things and we went through what we went through in order to be who we are now so that we can change it. If we had been anything else, this would not have been
😉