The Mother I Lost, the Mother I’ve Become
Embracing legacy, memory and inherited pieces of myself
We all become one or some combination of both of our parents, eventually. Call it genetics or destiny, but it is, in short, inevitable.
This morning, the simple act of sitting outside my father’s home listening to the summer cicadas and drinking a glass of lemon water jarred the realization into knowing.
It was something that happened with my older sister yesterday that planted the seed of this revelation. She had put away the glass I always use at my father’s house to drink water — a constant companion — in the dishwasher.
I began to search frantically for it, almost panicking that “my glass” was no longer available. It was irrational behavior, I know, as there were other hardly used glasses in the cupboard waiting patiently to be chosen.
That point did not go lost on my sister, a matter-of-fact and bossy Aries, who noted, “You can get another glass.” When she saw that I was already digging MY glass out of the depths of the dishwasher, she sighed. “Oh, you like that one.”
Then this morning, while I was listening in quiet meditation to the insect song, I remembered: My mother’s omnipresent glass of water sweating on the counter as she worked in the garden or hung clothes on the line outside. Like me, she always had one close by to sip, even at a time when there weren’t countless health gurus on countless podcasts promoting the importance of hydration.
And so my transformation — which I’ve been slouching toward all of these years — is complete. I have finally become my mother, the parent with whom I always had a difficult relationship. It explains a lot about the relationship I’ve had with myself, which I’ve only now reconciled at a half-century old.
It will be 18 years in October that she hasn’t been with us; the next day, I will turn 51. But I feel her now, of course, as I spend a month at my father’s house in Pennsylvania.
It is far from the home and life that I’ve built for myself in fishing village-turned-surfer’s and expat’s paradise on the southwest coast of Portugal. But I have been returning here every August in recent years to relieve my sister of the daily burdens of helping to care for my father as he becomes more feeble in old age.
My mother is all over this home, a townhouse in an over-55 community in suburban Philadelphia — even though she never lived here. My mother died when she was 71 yet my father, mere months younger, lived on. He will turn 89 in three weeks, and four years ago we moved him here, as the house he’d shared with my mother was becoming difficult to navigate and had long been too large for his humble needs.
But most of the furniture and decoration from that house remains — and that was all my mother. My mother and father had that traditional relationship of the times — he went out and worked and she managed the household and children: my sister and I. The home was her domain, and she certainly put her stamp all over it.
My mother had a rather unique style — she favored pastel shades and flowers, fake plants and lace. It was fashionable of a certain era and ethnicity (both my parents are second-generation Italian-Americans) but a bit out-dated, although it could be deemed “retro” given our human penchant for nostalgia.
This is also something I share with her — a flair for color and accessorizing, a nearly obsessive commitment to my own style rather than following any current trend. I even have, in my-middle age, adopted her love of flashy fabric patterns, of making sure everything matches, even down to my toenail polish.
My mother struggled her whole life with anxiety and depression, and went to her grave an unhappy and unfulfilled woman. I certainly inherited her sensitivity and inherent insecurity, though I’m of a generation that believed in therapy while she was not.
I had similar struggles to my mother that peaked perilously in my 30s — just after she died, in fact, which of course was no coincidence — even suffering a nervous breakdown. But because I committed to inner work and sought help and solutions when I needed them, my evolution and trajectory in this life has been far different.
I am happy now and, though my inner voice needs to talk down insecurity almost daily, I have far more joy, freedom and fearlessness in my life than she ever had.
Physically there are similarities, of course, as well. As the second-born daughter I have always been told I look more like my mother, though I believe this has changed over time as my father’s genes begin to make their presence known.
But recently I’ve been told I have her smile, and my height among a family of relatively short people comes from her taller-than-average brothers. I am less olive-skinned than my father, more prone to freckling like my mother, though I spend much of my life in the sun and rarely sunburn.
The foundation of who I am is her, and I feel her close to me now as I sit on the flower-patterned couch she bought and type these words, listening to the grandfather clock she bought with my father in my childhood chime the half-hour. In the years since her death I’ve dreamed of her often, and I always welcome her appearance as if it is a visit.
In the week since I’ve arrived I swear she’s been arranging the dishcloths in the kitchen, as I’ve found them in places and positions I’m sure I didn’t put them, and my father — never one to do much housework — does little more now than shuffle from one room to another.
Indeed, the sunny kitchen is always where I remember her the most: drinking that glass of water at the counter, cooking our nightly meals, ironing all of our clothes — even sheets and my father’s handkerchiefs — on a board that always stood open.
Last night I was sure I had witnessed her presence here. I sleep in the only room upstairs when I visit my father, and had descended the stairs to use the toilet. As I started back up, I heard a noise in the kitchen, and turned to see what looked like a brief flash of movement.
All went still again and I waited, watching lights from the traffic from a nearby street pass outside the kitchen’s uncovered windows. There was only stillness and the soft hum of the refrigerator.
“Goodnight mom,” I murmured to no one, and started my ascension once more.