Lessons from my mother for my daughter
Some thoughts on teenage girlhood and some gushing about my Mom
I learned a few weeks ago, through a rehearsed yet completely botched ritual involving blue raspberry and cherry flavored Jolly Ranchers, that the baby in my uterus does not have a Y chromosome.
Some people are particular about saying “we learned the sex of our baby” rather than gender, or make a point of not learning at all because “why does it matter? Do kids even have gender?” And sure, it’s not that important, it’s not like now I’ll only take hand me downs if they’re pink, or like I can predict the trajectory of this kid’s life based on that bit of information.
But this updates my expectations for the next couple decades of our lives together in a few significant ways:
She’s more likely to have good self control at a younger age. This means she’s less likely to throw tantrums, hit other kids, be disruptive in class, etc. (Good)
She’s more likely to be interested in and capable of taking care of her younger siblings—of which I hope there are many—at a younger age. (Good)
She’s more likely to develop an obsession with Disney Princesses. (Good)
She’s more likely to start disliking me for no good reason in about twelve years. (Bad)
All of these things applied to me, but the one I’ve been reflecting on most lately is the last. My understanding, based on my friends and my media consumption, is that I had a pretty mild version of this. I never yelled at my mom, or stormed out while she was talking to me, or told her I hated her. Instead, I just had some bitch-eating-crackers-syndrome, where I got inexplicably irritated by her most benign actions. If she borrowed something of mine or asked me simple questions about my life, I’d get weirdly worked up inside. Back then, I was more contrarian and negative towards everyone, but this attitude was strongest with her. It was like I wanted to position myself as independent from her, different from her, in every way I could. My college essay was basically a proud description of how I did not fit in with my mother and sister.
Now that all feels so alien to me. Now, I want so much to be like her. She is inhumanly generous. She’s energetic, adventurous, diligent, and articulate. She’s beautiful—the first time I really felt pretty was when I looked in the mirror on psychedelics and saw her face in mine.
But of course, what I most wish to emulate now is her motherhood.
I wrote a bunch of words to put here about why and how I aspire to be the type of mother she is; about trust, control, standards, and culture. I meant them and might publish them eventually, but they ended up feeling a bit off-topic. For one, many of them applied to my father, too, whom I love and like very much but do not hope to become in the same way.1 And one thing I did get from my mother is the propensity to cry when at all emotionally moved in any direction, and I wasn’t crying while writing it, which I took as a mark against its sincerity.
So instead, here are a bunch of small things about my mother that did have me constantly shedding tears while writing, a good sign that they’re really getting at something.
My mom is in some ways cold: she’s blunt and serious, mostly an acts of service type of person. But she always greets her children with a hug and squeals of whatever set of seemingly-random syllables that she assigned to each of us as babies.
As a child, I remember being absolutely stunned by her competence at air travel. From the perspective of an ignorant and incapable kid, her ability to buy plane tickets, shepherd her three children and husband to the airport, carry so much of our luggage as we navigated all of the lines and the machines and the signs, and remain calm and happy the whole time, appeared superhuman. Obviously I am less impressed by this now: I too can purchase plane tickets and find my way to the gate. But she still constantly demonstrates this wonderful combination of competence and level-headedness—high conscientiousness and low neuroticism, if you will—which makes me feel so at peace.
She makes the best and most credible threats. Once, when I was seven or so, she warned me that if I ever smoked a cigarette she would shave my head—a particularly terrifying prospect to a girl who inherited her hair from the woman pictured above. I still believe she meant it.
She has her own set of quirks, which are different from mine and occasionally frustrating, but which I mostly find utterly charming. She keeps the house at 55 degrees in the winter, and arranges giant plastic bins in her back yard in advance of rain, which she subsequently uses to water her plants—in Massachusetts, which is not at all prone to droughts. She buys fancy coco powder by the gallon. She walks really fast, and is some combination of carefree and spatially unaware such that if you’re walking with her and you don’t keep up she will simply leave you behind.
She handled our teenage years with such grace. She set high standards for our behavior and called us out when we spoke to her at all disrespectfully. But she never bit back, never escalated, never gave us reason to be more negative. She never commented on our appearances. It was almost taboo in our house to make such irrelevant things as our physical features and beauty habits salient.
And recently I’ve been feeling grateful for how she’s handled my impending motherhood. There’s this stereotype that when you’re pregnant, people, especially older women, especially older women who are related to you or your child, will start giving you lots of unsolicited advice and expressing lots of concerns about your parenting abilities and generally treating you like you’re incompetent and selfish. I have experienced some of this, from female relatives and male friends alike. I’ve been told that I should only consider the baby’s health in decisions about birth. I’ve been quizzed about where I’m going to change my baby’s diaper, what I’m going to do about insurance, how I’m going to baby-proof our apartment. I’ve been told that various of my well-researched and thought through plans will fail, repeatedly. I’ve been lectured about my dietary choices by people who have no respect for, understanding of, or interest in the reasons why I avoid certain animal products. But I’ve gotten none of this from my own mother. She is so excited to meet this baby and so eager to help raise her. She cares lots I’m sure, but she also respects me and is calibrated about risk, so does not waste breathe warning me about every possible mistake I might make.
All of that gestures at what about my mother I hope I can mimic, and why I feel she deserves the happiest of birthdays today.
Perhaps for gendered reasons. I think role models are thing that even from a young age are quite gender-aligned, hence why father figures matter so much for young boys, why female representation matters so much for young girls, and why little girls are more into Jasmine than the title and main character, Aladdin.
Your mom looks so much like you in that first photo it’s insane—thought it was you at first glance. Interestingly, I sometimes glance in the mirror and see my father. My dad has always rocked a mustache (+ goatee) so I assume this is some of the reason his image pops out more than it used to, never used to think I looked very much like him. Those first few times I saw my dad I was frightened—now it just makes me curious.
Never have I ever hated my mom, but there was a point in time in which I felt pretty removed from the rest of my family. I spent many years, like age 12 to 18, locked away in my room, avoiding a lot of family members. I often felt very different from everybody. I never felt *that* close to any of my family members. I thought societal norms on family were kind of weird (ways in which you’re expected to be close to family just because you were born into that relationship). I’ve almost completely 180’d now, I spend a significant amount of time talking to family, even though I think I’m still quite different from them in pretty much every way. My mom has always let me be, let me grow independently, always offering support, and I’ve always appreciated that. If I had kids, I think my mom would let me do my thing about it and trust my judgement.
Idk if you saw that Aella poll semi recently that said “more romantic relationships have been ruined as an indirect result of teenage exposure to porn or Disney movies?” and the poll was split exactly 50/50. Sometimes I do these little thought exercises about having kids (less so than I used to)—here it seems pretty possible that Disney is not a great influence on children (but not from a right wing talking point, mainly for representations of good and evil or something), but also I find myself looking down on people who were not allowed to watch shows like SpongeBob growing up lol. Then you kind of find yourself in this micromanaging hole.
I was talking to someone the other day about how I wish my parents had treated me with a much greater level of maturity. I feel ~no different cognitively now than I did when I was 4 years old. I feel like I could’ve been reasoned with at a very young age. Maybe especially if I grew up a rationalist 💀 but maybe that also means other kids bully you… I have no idea.
Still enjoying these!! Still hope you continue writing, even after the baby is born :)