having children of my own. Nearly every day an echo of my mother’s mothering wafts by me, like the aroma of soup simmering on a stove down the street. Even as we swear we will not do someof the horrible things they did, not pull the thumb like a cork from our children’s mouths, not demand that they clean their plates, our mothers’ words come full-blown out of our mouths, usually in anger: “If you do that it will be the last thing you do.” “You’ve got another think coming.” “Over my dead body.” “Because I said so, that’s why.” Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers’ incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?
Perhaps those conflicting emotions help us reconcile ourselves to our mothers, make us able to apprehend the shadow of a human being who is just raising other human beings the best she can, beneath the terrible weight of the concept. In the beginning it is difficult. I have envied my friends who have had their mothers to help them with new babies, then felt the envy evaporate at the distress and doubt my friends sometimes felt about who was really the mother here. “No girl becomes a woman until she has lost her mother,” someone once told me. And there was the proof: women reduced to children again in a way I never could be.
Yet it is having children that can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too—unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A . M . with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child’s trouble.
Most of this has little to do with the specific women involved. In my case that is certainly true. This firestorm is not about one sweet, gentle mother, perhaps tough and demanding inside, and one tough, demanding daughter, now sweet andgentle with her own children. It has to do with Mother with a capital M: someone we are afraid to be and afraid that we can never be. It has to do with a torch being passed, with finding it too hot to hold, with looking up at the person who has given it to you and accepting that, without it, she is no Valkyrie, just a woman muddling through, much like me, much like you.
RAISING
A
CHILD
THE BIRTHDAY-PARTY WARS
I have returned from the birthday-party wars. My side lost. Balloons were broken, jelly sandwiches fell jelly-side down on wall-to-wall carpets, the wine for the adults ran out. Two of the same dinosaurs were received as gifts. (They were stegosauruses.) There were whistles as party favors in violation of decent human standards. All around us the battle raged. This is why the birth process is roughly commensurate to participating in a triathalon in hell: to prepare parents for the birthday parties. In the thick of one celebration I took a cleansing breath and then panted. It did not help. I realized the following:
—Piñatas are the only things in life that are truly unbreakable. You can knock them, you can hit them, you can beat them with a stick, yet they continue to swing through the air: ruffled crepe paper, papier-mâché, and a smile. Dumb donkey. Kids are not half as discombobulated by this as adults, who understand that the fun is not supposedto be in the hitting but in the breaking. Dumb adults. Finally the fathers move in to tear the thing limb from limb.
—No matter how much you pay a clown to entertain, it could never be enough. Just as you are finally ready to shut all the little guests in the laundry room—“Look, here’s a game—fold the towels!”—he has managed to set up his equipment. You
Perhaps those conflicting emotions help us reconcile ourselves to our mothers, make us able to apprehend the shadow of a human being who is just raising other human beings the best she can, beneath the terrible weight of the concept. In the beginning it is difficult. I have envied my friends who have had their mothers to help them with new babies, then felt the envy evaporate at the distress and doubt my friends sometimes felt about who was really the mother here. “No girl becomes a woman until she has lost her mother,” someone once told me. And there was the proof: women reduced to children again in a way I never could be.
Yet it is having children that can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too—unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A . M . with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child’s trouble.
Most of this has little to do with the specific women involved. In my case that is certainly true. This firestorm is not about one sweet, gentle mother, perhaps tough and demanding inside, and one tough, demanding daughter, now sweet andgentle with her own children. It has to do with Mother with a capital M: someone we are afraid to be and afraid that we can never be. It has to do with a torch being passed, with finding it too hot to hold, with looking up at the person who has given it to you and accepting that, without it, she is no Valkyrie, just a woman muddling through, much like me, much like you.
RAISING
A
CHILD
THE BIRTHDAY-PARTY WARS
I have returned from the birthday-party wars. My side lost. Balloons were broken, jelly sandwiches fell jelly-side down on wall-to-wall carpets, the wine for the adults ran out. Two of the same dinosaurs were received as gifts. (They were stegosauruses.) There were whistles as party favors in violation of decent human standards. All around us the battle raged. This is why the birth process is roughly commensurate to participating in a triathalon in hell: to prepare parents for the birthday parties. In the thick of one celebration I took a cleansing breath and then panted. It did not help. I realized the following:
—Piñatas are the only things in life that are truly unbreakable. You can knock them, you can hit them, you can beat them with a stick, yet they continue to swing through the air: ruffled crepe paper, papier-mâché, and a smile. Dumb donkey. Kids are not half as discombobulated by this as adults, who understand that the fun is not supposedto be in the hitting but in the breaking. Dumb adults. Finally the fathers move in to tear the thing limb from limb.
—No matter how much you pay a clown to entertain, it could never be enough. Just as you are finally ready to shut all the little guests in the laundry room—“Look, here’s a game—fold the towels!”—he has managed to set up his equipment. You
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