Mothers

“I don’t want to become my mother.” “I hope I don’t become my mother.”

For most of my twenties and thirties, these were my mantras. Best I could tell, they were shared by my friends. None of us were clear who we were or what we wanted to be, but we were quite sure that we did not want to be like our mothers. This seems to be a theme in every generation but for us, daughters of the fifties coming of age in the sixties, it was especially critical. As one of my classmates later wrote, we were the girls who entered college hoping to be June Cleaver and the women who graduated hoping to be Betty Friedan. We, the daughters whose mothers had exchanged first names for “Mrs” and dreams for domesticity, could not, would not, should not become our mothers.

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Time passes. Things change. The lens through which we see the world refocuses. Most of the women that I graduated college with are long since mothers themselves. Some are grandmothers. Many have lost their mothers. Some of the mothers have lost daughters. But amongst us, a lucky few. We are the daughters who are fortunate to have reached our fifties with mothers who have seen 80. For us, the mother-daughter axis has made a seismic shift: our fears have turned to longings.

My friend, Rena and I are out walking. We up-date each other on our teenage kids, then turn to our mothers. I begin.

“My mother is doing great. She just returned from a wedding in Santa Monica. From there she went to Las Vegas with my aunt and uncle and then back to California to visit friends in San Diego. She arrived home at 1:30 in the morning yesterday and when I phoned her she had already been out to a party. She said she couldn’t stay out late because she had to read a book before her class discussion the following morning.”

“I hate to one-up you, but my mother is fly fishing on a remote river in Canada. She’s living in a cabin with a group of anglers for a week.” Rena went on to tell me about some of her mother’s earlier fishing adventures. I was awed, but not especially surprised. After all, it hasn¹t been so long since they returned from riding together at a dude ranch.

My mother turned 80 this year. Rena¹s mom turned 85. In a few days I will visit my friend, Sharon, at her vacation home in the Berkshires. While I am there, I face a rematch of bocce with Sharon’s mother, Lillian. Lillian is 87 and plays a mean game of bocce. She used to play croquet, but favors bocce “because I like to throw that hard ball.” After we finish the game, Lillian will surely bring me up to date on the volunteer work. She alternates days between her synagogue and her local hospital.

When I arrived at college nearly 40 years ago, I was matched with Karen, whose mother, Annetta was a feisty Maine native bearing little resemblance to June Cleaver. At the time I admired Annetta for her spirit and her take charge approach to life. And so I wasn¹t surprised when Karen recently told me that her efforts to convince her mother to move out of her home and into assisted living had met with Annetta’s “forget that bad idea” response. At 84, Annetta is taking a course in classic films and going for her second “I Walked One Hundred Miles” certificate at her gym. Karen tells me that Annetta was originally closed out of the film course, but she phoned the professor and convinced him to make a space for her. Annetta still walks the beach in Portland, takes herself out to dinner when she feels like it, cooks for friends and uses her e-mail to send her grandchildren “dirty” jokes.

In many ways, Annetta is like Doris, my friend, Susan¹s mother. Also 84, Doris is another example of someone who does not let her years slow her down. Recently I had lunch with Doris and her closest friends, Annette, Estelle and Barbara. Annette arrived for lunch in her red sports car with the top down and invited me to go “skinny dipping in her pool.” Estelle told us all about the latest programs that she is organizing for her singles seminars. And Barbara, who is recovering from hip replacement surgery, was happy to say that she is back swimming long distances daily.

Susan, who is battling a life threatening illness, told me later, “I used to envy young women with babies. Now I envy old women.”

Thirty-four years ago my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember the terror that swept over me when I heard the news. Five years ago, my mother spent the summer in a New York hospital, with what appeared to be dementia, but which turned out to be normal pressure hydrocephalus.

After three months in a “completely out of it state,” she underwent surgery to have a shunt placed in her head. When she awoke from anesthesia, my mother asked what day it was. When we told her, she asked my sister to dial a number. My sister asked why. My mother said that her manicurist¹s son was being operated on the day before and she wanted to know how he was doing.

Perhaps it is the knowledge that we could have lost our mothers at any step along the way that inspires their daughter’s awe? Surely we treasure most that which we cannot take for granted. But here, at the 80 plus and 50 plus year marks, I think it is more than the fact that they were spared and we were spared that prompts us to hope that we will have the good fortune to become our mothers.

These women, who give such grace to 80, teach us how to live. We, who can so easily remember the time when we scorned them for what we thought was giving up and giving in, now we see them otherwise. We see how much they do with each day that is given them and how they do not “go gently into that good night.” Instead, they dance. We see it in their eagerness to learn, their willingness to explore and always in the way they thumb their noses at “old age.” My grandmother was the same way. I remember hearing her, at 80 or 82, referring to the “old ladies.” They were women in their 70’s.

Having known several people who were not lucky enough to reach their fiftieth birthdays, I know that no one can plan on 80. I may not have the chance to walk in my mother¹s footsteps. Still, I count myself among the very fortunate. My mother’s long, full and ever unfolding life offers me enduring inspiration.

Becoming our Mothers