Scorpio

Mum and Wee Ru - 1962

“OMG, I’ve become my mother!”

It’s the universally-dreaded fate of every adult daughter, to recognize the traits in ourselves that we remember in our mothers while we were growing up. Children learn by example and I guess it’s true enough: when it comes to operating in the real world, boys learn from their fathers and girls learn from our mothers. I’ve watched women around me for years. I’ve known doormats and harridans, timid little mice and saber-toothed tarts, mothers who take pride in their children and mothers who lament the little beggars ever being born. I’ve seen mothers rule their daughters and I’ve seen mothers ruled by their daughters. In my job, I see evidence of women who love their kids but are unable to care for them, whose problems are so immense, so adult, that the kids must be removed for their own safety—and I can’t imagine what that feels like to a child. I do know that the pattern will repeat itself, that the daughter removed from her mother will often have her own child removed further down the road. Sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes, unfortunately, love is misused, misguided and misunderstood. Why can’t the reverse be true and a healthy pattern evolve? Well, in my corner, it did. In a perfect world, every daughter would have a mother like mine.

From the day I was born, my father insists that there was something special between my mother and me. Really? I’m the fourth of five; talk about sharing the wealth. I might have scored big time if my wee sister hadn’t surprised the clan after I was born – with five years between me and the Big Guys, I could have lived the privileged life of an almost-only child. As it happened, the chess pieces were placed for a reason. And there was (is) something special between my mother and me, just as there was (is) something special between her and each of her bairns. Each of us was cuddled and cared for from our first breath, raised with the solid understanding of our place in the pack and how to keep the balance thereof. Strangely, it’s my mother’s strength of will that fixes prominently in my childhood memories of her. She was the rock, the hub, the central nut (if not as nutty as the rest of us) that held the family together. Mum was the nerve center, the financial manager, the maker of killer soup and baker of superior scones. She fed us on a shoestring, kept us neat and tidy, made judicious use of her authority to break up sibling squabbles, and when my arthritis hit … oh, boy. That’s when things get laser-bright for me. That’s when whatever existed between us at the start kicked into full gear, at what cost to the rest of the family I still do not know. All I know for sure is that my mother got me through it and I got through it for her. She wavered once or twice, but that only strengthened my resolve. I was not going to let her bear the burden of my pain (though what mother worth her salt would not wish it on herself to spare her child?), and while a lot of the day-to-day drama is now misty in my memory, the power of the love remains, amplified a thousandfold from what I knew at the time.

I would have loved my mother anyway, because she’s a warm, wonderful, generous, resolute, amiable, and occasionally ferocious, woman. She’s taken her foot off the gas of late, having set her bairns free to wreak our own brand of havoc on the world, and is now less Mum and more herself, a person with magical attributes that make her exceptional in her own right. Today is her birthday—I forget which one, wink wink—and true to my custom, I perceive the occasion as a kind of thanksgiving. I may love my mother with all my heart, but above all else, I am grateful for her.

“OMG, I’ve become my mother!”?

Bring it!

Ru and Wee Mum 2010