Mothers Be Good to Your Daughters

I don't know how to love my mother.

The above statement is difficult for me to come to terms with, especially since I realize that it has a lot to do with why I have difficulty connecting to my own daughter on various levels.

"Mothers be good to your daughters, Daughters will love like you do."

A simple verse from a not so simple song.

I can't explain the relationship, or lack thereof, that I have with my mother. I don't "get" her. She and I have never seen much of anything similarly. We never had that relationship many girls get to have with there mothers. We didn't talk about boys. She didn't introduce me to makeup. She came from an era in which girls didn't participate in sports, so although I think she enjoyed that I was athletic, I don't think she understood that part of me either.

My mom had me in 1974. She was 34 years, but to turn 35 later in the year. In 1974, that was a big deal. I really think so many of the problems my mother and I have are because of shift in the women's movement during this time. My mother was reared to be a wife and mother, but something changed when I was born. It almost seemed that who my mother was was what every women in America was fighting. With her being born in 1939 and a teenager in the 1950s and having lived a sheltered and protected life by her parents, what could my mother possibly have know about raising a teenage daughter in the early 1990s?

When I think about all that had changed from 1959 when she was 20 to 1994 when I was 20, I begin to understand why we can't communicate. How can a mother be good to a daughter she can't connect to, she doesn't understand, in a society that she can't connect to and in a society she doesn't understand?

What makes me the saddest? I know I will lose my mother without ever really knowing her. I don't think she really knows herself. Life made so many things possible for women after the 70s and she just got left out.

I don't know how to love my mother.

I watch her struggle with depression and saddness. Where does she fit in? Where does she belong? I wish that woman who was funny and happy and beautiful would realize that she still exists. She doesn't have to get mad or sad. I have tried to talk to her, but something else has taken a hold of her. It won't let go. She won't let it go.

What happens if I lose my mother and I never really knew her?

Every time I fly home to Fresno I wonder and cry that I missed another opportunity to know her.

I don't know how.

Will my daughter wonder the same thing about me? Daughters will love like you do...