WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM MEMOIR ABOUT THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP?

In March, citizens of Washington State gradually realized we’d been invaded by a new and deadly virus.  To conquer this illness, we must shelter-in-place.  For an avid reader and a writer, this landed squarely in my lap as a golden gift of unexpected time (ten weeks so far). Libraries and bookstores were closed but I’d collected 17 Mother/Daughter memoirs while writing and publishing Parsing the Dragon: A Memoir. I had read all of these memoirs while writing mine, but often wondered how they compared to one another. This BLOG reveals what I discovered.

Six authors wrote about CARING FOR MOTHERS who were aging, or ill with dementia or who were hoarders and some needed TLC as in The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.  Some daughters wrote of LIVING TOGETHER with their mothers like Vivian Gornick in New York City (Fierce Attachments) and Katie Hafner who lived with her mother and daughter in San Francisco (Mother Daughter Me).  Two wrote about mother/daughter JOURNEYS--Carole Estby Dagg tells the true story of mother/daughter relatives who trekked from Washington State to New York City in 1896, to meet a publisher in The Year We Were Famous and Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann share their JOURNEY to sacred sites in Greece and France.  Others simply took on the STUDY OF A MOTHER like Mary Gordon in Circling my Mother.  Some were inspired in their own lives by outstanding ACCOMPLISHED MOTHERS such as Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead in Composing A Life and Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer written by Sara Lawrence Lightfoot about her mother, one of the first African-American physicians in America.  Reeve Lindbergh has also written several memoirs about her famous parents, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Charles Lindbergh. Under A Wing is my favorite.

Most disturbing were the STORIES OF LOSS by women who lost children such as Toni Morrison in Beloved and daughters who lost their mother.  (See Blackbird and Still Waters by Jennifer Lauck; and Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah.) I was struck by the strong connection between mother/daughter even if there is animosity and how deeply the loss of a mother can affect her daughter.

I also gathered thoughts from Alice Walker’s book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, and from Ursula Le Guin’s Dancing at the Edge of the World, filled with speeches and essays about women writers and their families. (See the essay “The Fisherwoman’s Daughter”, 1988.)

     Some MEMORABLE QUOTES included the following:

In Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick writes, “My relationship with my mother is not good, and as our lives accumulate it often seems to worsen.  We are locked into a narrow channel of acquaintance, intense and binding. . .we walk the streets of New York together endlessly.”

Women write of being estranged from their mothers.  Alice Walker in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens tells the story of her last year of college, learning she was pregnant.  She writes of lying for days in her dorm bed at college, a sharp razor beneath her pillow.  She speaks of feeling lost and alone.  “I also began to understand how alone woman is, because of her body.”

Mothers and daughters often seemed stifled, unable to share the most intimate situations that affect women’s lives such as pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, marriage. Living in a patriarchal world seems to muzzle these discussions, to push them aside as insignificant but I remember how in each of my three pregnancies, I realized I’d have to go through the birth, and death was always a possibility.  I felt so alone. When I reached menopause, I read books to find out what was happening to my body.  If my mother and I discussed this, I don’t remember.  My father was a doctor, but I didn’t even dream of speaking to him about these things.

Author Mary Gordon uses her memoir Circling My Mother to compose a study of her mother in her many roles as widow, sister, breadwinner, single mother.

Ann Kidd Taylor writes of her mother, author Sue Monk Kidd in their joint book Traveling with Pomegranates, “The best gift she has given me is the constancy of her belief whatever I become.  She loves me.  To her, I am enough.”

Ann Taylor’s description of her mother is what I have aspired to be to my two daughters.  Having been raised in a storm of constant criticism, always feeling that I could never be enough, never do enough, I decided to rear my daughters differently.  Like Mary Gordon, I made a study of my mother to form understanding.  I vowed not to repeat the behavior I witnessed from my mother to me and between my mother and her mother, my grandmother.  On the paternal side, my grandmother and my father’s sister, my aunt, seemed more like close friends. My aunt never married and the two cared for one another in many ways until my aunt died from cancer.

In my own book, I write about how I tried to see my mother apart from me, as herself.  She’d aspired to knowledge, education and earned a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from The University of Illinois in the 1930s, even though she’d returned home for her sophomore year when she was rejected by the sorority she’d chosen.  She attended a nearby community college and returned to the University in Urbana as a junior.  She met my father and finished college. After graduation, she waited for Dad to finish medical school. World War II was raging so she lived with her parents but often spoke of accomplishments in her jobs during those years when she worked in public relations for Chicago hotels. When the U.S. Navy called for doctors to join the war, my father graduated early.  Then my parents were able to marry. They spent a year in San Diego, California, awaiting Dad’s orders to ship out on an aircraft carrier on the Pacific Ocean as ship’s doctor. Mom was pregnant with me, so Dad took her back to her parents by train in Chicago.

Mom’s dreams of a career of her own vanished with the end of the War.  Dad returned, completed his internship and joined a family medical practice in Decatur, Illinois. Society thrust Mom into the accepted roles of housewife, mother, doctor’s wife.  She did spend a year or two helping the YWCA raise money to build a pool when I was in high school.  She learned to drive then and after I married and left, she earned a teaching certificate and led Decatur children throughout central Illinois teaching them the history of their state through Title One. Then she ran for the Decatur School Board and served two terms. After that she set up The Decatur Foundation to help raise money for local schools.

Marriage and my own children loaded me with volumes of new understanding and appreciation for my mother.  I also balanced my own career as a writer, reporter, public relations director and fund raiser. I struggled to work, care for three children and an alcoholic husband.

I knew I did not want to continue to carry around my animosity towards my mother.  To help me untangle our relationship, I evaluated my life through counseling and Al Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics.  I also exercised and gardened to release my anger.  I gathered knowledge about my mother’s life so I could see her as a person, not just my mother.  This helped me lift judgment and opened the door to forgiveness of both of us. Mom lived to be 96 and never changed but I did.  By looking at our relationship differently, I found love for her and for myself. I also questioned if I was living my mother’s dreams through my career.  What did I really want to do?   I divorced my first husband and married my present husband in l988. I returned to graduate school to expand my career into writing and teaching.  I also enlarged my spiritual journey.  Rich and I met in Al Anon.  Both of us were on a journey of spirituality and longed to find truth about the God of our understanding.  We’ve traveled that journey together for 32 years in June.

NOTE:  Many are struggling to adapt to the consequences of the Pandemic.  That’s why I have decided to list the websites or emails of three dear friends.  I hope you will visit their websites.

https://mindyhardwick.wordpress.com will lead you to writer Mindy’s information about her journey as a writer for children and romance.  She has many published books, most available at amazon.com.  One of the most read is Kids in Orange, her memoir about working with teens in juvenile detention in Everett, Washington.  She also teaches classes in writing the picture book and has authored a few of those.

In my book, I speak of SOUND STYLES, a clothing store in Edmonds, Washington where I have shopped for years.  Owner Jenny Murphy is now selling by appointment so you can visit online for more information or to make an appointment to shop with her personally.. You can also get on her list to receive her BLOG and YOUTUBE videos of fashionable clothing. https://soundstylesnewsletter.com

Don Yackel is a special friend who sailed with us on “Le Saint Louis”, our 35S5 Beneteau sailboat, when we lived in Rochester, New York, in the early 1990s. He made numerous journeys on Lake Ontario with Rich, Becca and I. He now lives in Florida and writes of his kayaking adventures. See also his book, The Idling Bulldozer and Other Paddling Adventures. To read more about Don and kayaking go to: Yakman.com

The view from our home in Union, WA

A picture of me with my daughter, Mindy

My daughter, Becca, with two of her many fur friends