I am my mother’s daughter, all bits and pieces, bone and fragment, fingertip and nail, although she is left-handed. I am my mother’s daughter, symmetrical, clean, dainty and yet hardened, aloof and never without the answer, although she is much better at crossword puzzles than I. Sometimes I think she knows more words than the dictionary.
“I don’t think you meant to write equanimity here,” she once said, pointing to a passage. “I know what I meant,” I replied, attempting to put the word in question into action. She grabbed a pen to jot her note in my margin. “I know what I meant,” I said louder, losing patience, “I used it specifically. We are just different.”
But we aren’t that different. I correct grammar and expect perfection, even though I know I am incapable of it myself. I delicately balance words on my tongue. I also throw them like daggers. This is a learned trait. My inheritance is not monetary.
My mother and I drink our coffee the same way. We pour the cream in first. We both order flat lattes and think the foam is a waste of space.
We both drink tea at night.
My mother smells like folded laundry starched with newspaper – part woman, part intellect. Sometimes when she is not around, I smell this. I know what this means. It means I smell like her.
I am my mother’s daughter, wedded to the blood that binds us and handcuffed to the foibles that tether us, ball and chain – no marriage certificate needed.
I know this and still I search for the differences, the details where we differ. They are there if I look for them.
My mother uses black pens. I prefer blue. That is one difference. “A-students use black pens,” she once critiqued while we were shopping for school supplies. I grabbed the biggest box of blue pens I could find and threw them in the cart.
“Suit yourself,” was all she said. And I did. I didn’t get all A’s, so as far as I know, she might have been right.
I can’t think of any more differences right now. All I see are the many patterns, consistencies, and traits that could have only come from her.
I sweep corners once a day. I never let company in when the house is messy. I make the bed every morning, cornering and tucking the sheet. It is deep within me. I can’t leave the house without everything tucked away.
When I was younger she dismissed a housekeeper because she decided she could clean better. I found this to be absurd, until I did the same thing. I reload the dishwasher when the order and placement of dishes is not up to my standards. I hate dishes in the sink.
All mothers hate dishes in the sink, I tell myself. We aren’t that alike. Yet the similarities stack higher as the years pass.
We both have broken tortoise-framed glasses. We both wear them on our respective drives home as we listen to NPR. “I can’t listen to this,” I screamed once when she picked me up from school. “I will never make my kids listen to the news,” I cried. I wanted music! I wanted to dance. Instead, we listened, and now, we still listen, I in my car, and she in hers.
I spent years avoiding these traits. I was waggish, a tad scattered, and rarely finished what I started. My head floated in the clouds. I am, after all, my father’s daughter too.
“She wanted to make sure you would be ok,” he told me on a drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. “She needed to make sure that you would be ok,” he repeated, adding, “No matter what.”
This makes so much sense now. No matter what.
I show emotion at the most inappropriate times, but am too often caught without it when it is most needed. These paraparetic behaviors are not mutable. They are not fickle. They are my mother. I forget to be soft and I cry too easily. I am stubborn and specific. I shoot supercilious glances when I feel inferior. I assume the worst will happen and I am loaded with battle. Even these words are a battle. I write none of the love, the hugs, the soft, and yet, there was so much, because, after all, I am my mother’s daughter.
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Really enjoyed this bacause he made me realize I am my mother’s daughter as well. Thanks for the nice piece
Great piece