The Lessons of a Mother

I realized this weekend that I need to take it easy on my mom. True, she has done things in the past few weeks (months, years?) to annoy me. But I've let myself get too upset about it. I've vented over-dramatically, perhaps. To make good copy? Maybe.

There is a delicate balance -- a struggle of power -- between mother and daughter. No matter the age. The mother is always the mother. Somewhere along the way, the daughter becomes a woman first, an adult -- and a daughter second. I think that is the root of the struggle. Who knows best? Who knows more? Who can yell louder?

I recognize, in the case of me and my mother, that sometimes I can yell louder only because she lets me. Because she backs down -- not because she gives up -- but because she is my mother, and more times than not, mothers let you win. You learn the lesson, not because they tell you, but because it finally hits you. It finally sinks in.

And so it was this weekend, when my mother called me Friday to tell me that she and my dad would not be coming to Ithaca for dinner on Saturday. The cold she had been fighting for a week had turned into an upper resperatory infection and pneumonia. I asked if she had food in the house for the weekend, what medicine she was on, etc. And then, because I had been so worried about my dad the past few weeks, I said, "is he sick, too?"

She said no. I should have left it at that. But my "filter" wasn't working, and I said, slightly snippier than I meant, "well don't get him sick."

We hung up with the usual love you's and good-bye's. But I heard it in her voice. Nothing as strong as "hurt," nothing as strong as "stung," but definitely something. I should have called her right back and apologized for my tone. But I didn't.

That night, I slept until about 3am, when I woke up from a horrible dream. My sister, her husband (the ones I don't get along with) and my father all showed up at my door to tell me that my mom had died. It was so realistic and so gut-wrenching, that I couldn't shake the feeling or the thoughts for more than an hour. If my mom hadn't been sick, I would have called her in the middle of the night -- just to make sure that she was okay. I fought the tears -- not only for the horrible thought that my mother, could in fact, be dead, but also for the guilt of the last words I spoke to her on the phone the night before.

Finally about 4:30, I fell back into a fitful sleep, but a sleep nonetheless. When I woke up about 9, I called my mom immediately. To check on her, in more ways than one. She of course was alive. And feeling better with the stronger antibiotics working.

I scolded her, in a caring way, for trying to make breakfast for her and my dad. "He can do it. He used to get up every Saturday morning and make himself an egg before going to work." I also told her to order pizza for dinner, rather than try to cook. And when I talked to her later in the day and she told me she had cooked, I asked what happened to the pizza. "Your father didn't want pizza."

"Well, then, he should have cooked something."

The balance was back -- the balance of worrying about my parents, and making sure that they were equally taking care of each other. It took a mother's lesson for me to realize consciously that I worry about both of them -- but sometimes favor one over the other unfairly.

And while this was a lesson not exactly given to me by my mother, it was indirectly -- because she raised me to have compassion, to have empathy and sympathy -- and to know when I've hurt someone. And to make it right.