I am the same age my mother was when she gave birth to me. I never considered the age particularly significant, but I have spent much time considering similarities and differences between us. I don’t compare terms like successes and failures, but in terms of which traits we share and where we differ. I’m not competitive by nature, and prefer to improving my shortcomings rather than compete against other’s accomplishments. Spoken like a failure? Maybe, but success isn’t black and white like corporate America would lead one to believe. Sometimes the best you do is simply to better your previous attempt. It isn’t a recipe for curing cancer, but it implies the desire to continue growing.
I shudder when I consider my mother was parenting three children when she was my age. When I see people younger than me, with a one child, I question whether or not they could really be ready for all the responsibility and selflessness it entails. It’s hard to imagine being altruistic and postponing the things I feel driven to do with my life. I always worried that a child would need more of me than I am prepared to give. Habitually, I always hold a little something back from relationships. Even the relationship with the Mister. Restraint is necessary in parenting, but so is being real, and being emotionally available.
Both parents were influential in shaping who I became. As I grow older and more contemplative, I am aware my father had a definite advantage in passing first. As a ghost of my memory, I am less likely to compare myself to him. There is a reverence achieved when life suspends. People are often hesitant to speak of your shortcomings in your absence of defending yourself. Although, in southern cultures they feel free to say whatever they damn well please provided it is prefaced with well bless his/her heart.
My mother and I are alike in many ways, some for better others worse. We are stubborn, self-sufficient, hard working, and determined. We are also easily frustrated by setbacks, non-confrontational, too quick to jump to conclusions and not easily forgiving. I hope I am more flexible than she is today. Aging suppresses flexibility. Maybe she was more flexible at my age, but she was firmly planted by the time I became a teenager.
I wonder where she thought she would be in her life at the age I am. Did she aspire to be more than a wife and mother, or was that enough? She once told me she had considered joining the army after nursing school, but she became smitten with my father and accepted his proposal instead. I also wonder if the army was really HER dream, or one my aunt had thrust upon her. My family has a long history of woman assigning their dreams to their progeny. My grandmother, my mother, my aunt, all guilty. I suppose that’s another tradition I would have chosen to abandon had I become a parent. Everyone should choose their own dreams, without the burden of vicariousness thrust upon their shoulders.
I hope her stubbornness will be beneficial in the right ways. That it will give me the strength to persevere and find my way in the world. The notion of independence is ironic. On one level, I think it pleased my mother to raise three independent children, but on the other hand, I think she wished I needed her more and was more malleable to her influence. Like her, I have my own ideas and do not change my mind without considerable thought. Unlike her, I don’t give a shit if you believe in the things I believe in, and I have no desire to change your beliefs so they imitate mine.
Approval is unimportant to me. I consider whether or not my actions are knowingly inconsiderate to others. I place value on common courtesy. My rights shouldn’t infringe upon your rights, but if my actions offend your sensibilities, you’ll have to deal with it on your own. I have difficulty living up to my expectations, don’t be disappointed if I don’t consider your expectations of me.
People grow and change, and yet adult children still access their parent’s strengths and weaknesses from the point of view as teenagers, and aging parents still treat their adult children like eleven year olds who don’t have enough common sense to come in out of the rain. My mother mentions how proud she is of her adult children, but she seldom praised our accomplishments during the ages it mattered most. She always clung to the notion we holding on out, or that we should doing better. All our accomplishments weren’t worthy of praise, but undermining our self-confidence was a hardly an effective motivator.
Unfortunately my thirteen year-old memory is more vivid than my thirty-plus year old memory. My default reaction is to associate her with the disapproving matriarch of my youth, just as her default memory of me is the irresponsible thirteen year old who was too uncoordinated to master a steak knife. I suppose that makes us even.
