Bonzer Words!: My Mother . . . Myself
...I now realize how much influence my mother had on my character. Whether it's her love of reading, her careful way of managing the family finances, her impeccable style of dressing, her unwavering sense of duty-I am very much her daughter. She will always be part of my life...
Lytrice Adams tells of a powerful mother-daughter bond.
This year on Mothers' Day, I had an interesting emotional experience. I felt that my mother was no longer there. That she was fully gone from my life. It's over two years since she died, and during most of that time, she seemed to have left a sort of void, an uprootedness, hanging somewhere in the background of my being.
I had come to believe this was just the way it was - a permanent sense of loss, an inevitable change in the way you define yourself in terms of family relationships when a central figure passed on. But this feeling I had was different. Somehow, the void had disappeared. There was a bridging over of that hollow in my psyche - a knitting together of the ragged edges of loss, in some ways similar to the way your teeth rearrange themselves to cover the gap left by an extraction. A resolution of finality. I wondered to myself whether this new acceptance meant that my mother was no longer a major force in my life. That I was now free to be my own person.
However, as I thought about it, I realized how inseparably bound I was to her. The connection will always be there. She had imprinted herself on my character in spite of all my efforts to 'not be like my mother'. I catch myself at times acting in ways that were so typical of her, ways that I decried when I was younger. Like the sneaky way she exerted control over her entire family. Putting the onus on someone else to make a decision for her. 'Would you like the soup or the vegetables, Mom?' would elicit the apparently innocent response: 'Give me any one, it doesn't matter.' I used to find that ploy particularly infuriating when I looked after her during her final years. Yet I have caught myself on occasions indulging in the same manipulative behaviour! Except of course, I could never get away with it!
Fortunately for me, not all my learned habits are 'bad'. Some of them are just plain weird. Kind of eccentric. Like never throwing away my old shoes. It does not matter that they are totally worn, scuffed, unwearable; that I have many pairs of nice new ones . I would hang on to those old shoes for dear life, relentlessly crushing any budding ideas arising in my mind telling me to get rid of them. I find myself hanging on to boxes of smelly old shoes for no reason but my mother did the same herself. I save old chipped crockery too. Just like she did. You'd think I would have learned my lesson after having to deal with tons of her old stuff after she died. When my dietician suggested some time ago that I should include canned sardines in my diet to boost my calcium intake, I reacted with horror.
'Why, what don't you like about sardines,' she asked.
I thought long and hard.
'I've never eaten sardines,' I confessed. 'My mother hated them. She would never have them in the house.'
'Well, you should make up your own mind,' she advised. 'They are good for you.'
But I still can't bring myself to eat the little fish. It's like an act of betrayal.
I now realize how much influence my mother had on my character. Whether it's her love of reading, her careful way of managing the family finances, her impeccable style of dressing, her unwavering sense of duty-I am very much her daughter. She will always be part of my life. And when I say 'good-morning' to total strangers, or avoid little green lizards, or line up pots of flowers on my window sill, I am acknowledging her presence in my personality.
And I wonder what quirky habits I am bequeathing to my daughter!
© Lytrice Adams
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Lytrice writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
