Cleaning out the last scraps of memorabilia from my mother's garage yesterday (she died a year and a half ago), I came across a letter from my mother to my father's parents in Kansas. It has no date, but must have been written when I was about five or six, because she says, in her less than perfect English, that I had just started taking piano lessons, "but believe me she isn't much ambitious, once she practice and that all."
Yesterday I also heard a story on the NPR program "This American Life," about a mother who died of cancer when her daughter was 16. Before she died, this woman decided to write a series of letters to her daughter, to be read every year on her daughter's birthday, until the girl turned thirty. The daughter opened these letters every year with a mixture of dread, anger and happiness; in them, the mother dispensed advice such as (I'm paraphrasing), "Do not marry outside the Mormon faith" and "Don't hesitate to put any children you have in a good daycare; it's important for you to continue with your career, whatever you choose to be in life."
Both my mother's letter and this mother's letters to her daughter filled me with a mixture of irritation and longing. I remember how harsh my mother could be if she thought I was being lazy in certain areas of my life. And it was often commendable, her strictness. But sometimes it wasn't; sometimes it was just harsh, and left me feeling inadequate to deal with life in a number of ways.
Now that I'm attempting to fill the role of mother/protector/life counselor, what do I do? How do I walk that difficult line between strict yet fair discipline, and attempting to control or dominate this little person? How do I stop myself when I'm trying to impose my personal life choices and ambitions on my son?
Today has been so exhausting that I'm going to finish this post, then fall into bed, though it's only eight o'clock. (He's been sleeping poorly for a few weeks now--after being sick, and enduring seemingly endless days of sewer work, his sleep rhythms and ability to soothe himself to sleep have gone haywire.) A big part of me is just asking, how am I going to survive his toddlerhood? But another part of me knows that I have to think about these control issues, even when I'm exhausted...because I might be repeating some of my mother's mistakes even now.
For instance. When my son grabs at something in my hands, and instead of patiently telling him "No, that's not for you right now, Mommy needs to use it" or diverting his attention with another activity, I just yank it away from him--which happened a couple times towards the end of the day today because I'd lost patience with him--then I'm exerting an illegitimate, semi-violent authority over him, as well as squelching his joy in my presence and dampening his natural curiosity. I hated myself, and hate myself, for doing that today.
Parents cannot lose patience. Period. We all do; but somehow, even when we do, we have to do it in a measured way. And as for ambition--we cannot force our children to become ambitious in any given area of their lives. If that ambition isn't there to begin with, it might mean the child is not meant for that activity (as proved to be the case with my piano-playing).
The last thing I want to remember about yesterday, though, has nothing to do with control. I was walking upstairs at my mother's house and visiting her bedroom, for perhaps the last time before the house is sold; a huge wave of sadness and longing washed over me as soon as I set foot in that cherished space. Though the room now contains no furniture, I could see her lying on her back on the bed, propped up with pillows, reading. The entire room neat as a pin; the bedspread an equal distance from the floor on all sides of the bed. I could hear her voice--with its lively yet gentle tones, welcoming me, gesturing at me to come join her on the bed. She was a lovely person and a wonderful mother, with her less-than-noble moments, like all of us...I miss her terribly.
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