Happy Mothers Day to all the mothers around the world! Many of us are fortunate to have our mothers. For those who have lost a mother, I am quite certain you carry her memory in your head. Truth be told, I think of my mother on a daily basis. I phone her several times a week and think of her imprint on my life. Make no mistake I will be flying home to celebrate her on Mother’s Day with other members of our family.

Everyone has a mother. We are all daughters.

We All Have A Mother

 Yes, mothers have different personalities. There are loving mothers, inspirational mothers, mothers who hover over their children and possessive mothers, angry mothers, selfish mothers, artistic mothers, mothers who teach us good values and mothers who don’t practice good values, career-minded mothers, latchkey mothers, brilliant mothers, funny mothers, understanding mothers and yes, there are happy mothers.

We Are Daughters

There are respectful daughters and disrespectful daughters, loving daughters, special needs daughters, beautiful daughters, jealous daughters, secure daughters and insecure daughters, funny daughters and sad daughters, bright daughters, musical daughters, kind daughters and yes, happy daughters.

We Can’t Choose Our Mother

We don’t get to choose our mother nor do our mothers get to choose us. We’re generations apart and we are the same sex. Both lead to conflict.  For these reasons alone, oftentimes at different stages of our lives, we meet head to head in disagreement.

I am a daughter and a mother to two daughters and, darling, it is not always easy riding. The ship sways to the left and to the right, finally in most cases steadying itself.

My growing up years with a strong mother were not easy because I was a strong daughter. She wanted everything her way, “for my best interest,” she said, and I wanted things my way to discover ‘the me in me.’  We played tug of war in my growing up years before I left for college. When I left home, I took all of my mom’s values and advice with me, stored in my head and today I am a woman with ‘the me in me carved out,’ my mother’s daughter.

We Are Mothers

As a mother of two daughters, life was easy until I married for the second time. Unlike my mom, I was not strict. One of my daughters was a perfect child. Not boring at all. She was a loving and respectful daughter and a good girl in every way. My other daughter was a good girl with a great personality and very loving. She brought home stray animals, which we of course saved. She was a Dickens with a mind of her own, like me. Testing the waters, she once made an appointment for me to visit a psychiatrist when I told her she could not go out at night in her car without two of her friends.  I did keep the appointment and we came to a meeting of the minds.

The three us called ourselves, ‘us girls’ and we spent a lot of time together.

When I married our relationship changed, not our love. A new husband for their mother, a new family, a new family lifestyle.

And now I am getting to the most important part of my musings:

I know there is not a daughter who deep down, does not love her mother. We are joined to our mothers from her umbilical cord. Our daughters are joined to us from our umbilical cord.  The tie can never be broken. 

A psychoanalyst friend of ours told me that daughters who tell him they detest their mothers eventually say, “I love my mom.” I am smiling.

I know what my mother would say. ” I agree with the psychoanalyst!”

 

A Tribute To My Mother On Mother’s Day

“In different corners of the world, when I see a phone there is only one voice I want to hear: my mothers.”

My Mother

My mother’s world was boundless. She explored it and reveled in its mystery. Amazingly, her world was not much smaller than mine and she was born in 1921!  She did everything with aplomb. Nothing stopped this mother of mine. To this day, I thank her for being the best teacher I have had. I am my mother’s daughter.