I made a comment about one of my daughter’s friends the other day. I know her mother well, and I said with some affection “she’s growing to be just like her mom.” My daughter replied with a laugh, “Don’t tell her that!”
I remember this phase of interpreting such an assessment as a stinging insult, and it lasts far into the 20s (at least it did for me). In the early years of my marriage, the worst thing my husband could say to me was “you’re just like your mother.” I would call her afterward, confiding, “there’s no hope for this marriage … he just doesn’t get me.”
It’s not that I didn’t appreciate my mother. She was this walking dichotomy that I was aware of early on: she worked to help our family escape its financial troubles, and emerged to be a skillful contributor to the growth of her high tech company. But she always lamented working full time, claiming she would rather have been a stay-at-home mom, even though it seemed she had ambition and desire to do more with her skills outside of the home. She was a dutiful and loving wife and mother, putting her own needs behind everyone else’s, but there was no question that she felt women should have the same kinds of family and career choices as men. We also lived across the street from my grandmother growing up and I had a close-up view of my mother’s struggles with her own mother.
Of course, a woman seeking to distance herself from her mother is given many opportunities to rethink her position when she herself has children. With my heart further opened by parenthood, I’ve noted what makes my mother an extraordinary woman.
She loves everyone in her family, and will make considerable efforts to help anyone who shares her blood, even when it seems they don’t deserve it. In one instance, my cousin, who exasperated us repeatedly with her failures to manage her own life and then had a daughter to boot, often called upon my mother for help. When my mom would reveal to me that she had to take off work to take my cousin to the hospital or to other places for her appointments, or lend money, I would counsel her to refuse. But my mom considered it her way of honoring her own mother and father. “They would turn over in their graves if one of their own was in this kind of need.”
I think of these exchanges often this year, as I happily view the graduation pictures of my cousin’s daughter, whose needs I would have abandoned. My mother’s faith in my cousin’s capacity for turning her life around far outweighed the rest of ours and my cousin repaid her faith by succeeding.
She is a tireless caregiver. When my dad was dying, I watched her take a break from tending to him to call her brother’s psychiatrist (institutionalized with Alzheimer’s) and advocate for a change in his medication. Afterward, she visited her elderly uncle to help her aunt tend to his growing health problems. She was incredibly adept at making critical decisions for those she cared for, while helping them maintain their dignity and feel like they were still in control.
She adores her grandchildren and my children have thrived with that love. When we lived in Austin, my daughter told her, “Gramma, when the phone rings, I always race to get it first in case it’s you.” Even before we thought of returning home, my son used to say he wanted to live next door to Gramma. My husband says of all we know, the best example of unconditional love he’s known in his life is my mother.
She is passionate about education and its capacity for changing one’s life. She continues to volunteer in the impoverished school district I grew up in. She even came to Morgan Hill for the community meeting held during our superintendent search. She does all of this while maintaining lifelong friendships and pursuing her love of music, history and travel.
She’s not perfect. Someone this active can be uncomfortably intense. But I can easily say that most she comes in contact with, however briefly, benefit from her transforming love. While I once pushed so hard to be different from her, I now worry about not being like her enough. Now, at this point in our marriage, the best thing my husband could say to me is “you’re just like your mother.”
Columnist Dina Campeau is a wife, mother of two teens and a resident of Morgan Hill. Her work for the last seven years has focused on affordable housing and homeless issues in Santa Clara County. Her column will be published each Friday. Reach her at dc******@*****er.net.
