Stomping around

It has been a difficult parenting week for me. Grace and I have been at each other’s throats, each crying on and off and yelling at each other. I have thought for ages about this old topic, mothers and daughters, since my college thesis. My 21 year old self surely thought my 35 year old self would have it figured out better by now. More control over her reactions, more maturity (ah how many realms of life that is true for, not just parenting my daughter!) Despite all of my thinking and all of my efforts I still don’t have answers as to how best to navigate the eddies and slipstreams of this particular river.

But one of my favorite bloggers has sage words today that, while not providing solutions, reassure me that I’m not alone. (Jenn of Breed ‘Em and Weep). This is not the first of her columns that has spoken to me like this. I am so grateful for writers out there whose words console, comfort, and create community. I know so profoundly the feeling of screwing up, sometimes spectacularly, and then of picking myself up and trying again. Thank you Jenn! Please keep sharing your journey – I am learning much from you.

“Today was a hard day for Sophie. Today was a hard day for me and for Sophie, together.

She raged. She pouted. She stomped. She ran. She howled.

I raged. I growled. I yelled. I chased. I threatened.

This is the way.

*****

In the end, as we usually do, we wind up sitting on her bed, working it out. It is never easy. We lurch, she and I. We interrupt each other. We raise our voices, and hiss at each other in blame—always! The blame! Bouncing off pink walls!

But: I have been a daughter before; she has not. I know that mothers and daughters, even the most loving, hiss more than snakes. There is always hissing, posturing, growling. It’s an animal relationship. The first step to surviving it is to entering the deal knowing there will be battles. This is how I see it.

Sophie is still deciding how to see it, this mother-daughter relationship of ours. I hate that occasionally it must come to this, but somehow, I am sure it must. There is something to this cycle of love-hate-love-hate-love that makes me sure I am doing something right.

I tell her I am sorry we had one of our rough days, but that it’s my job to teach her responsibility, to show her that the sun does not revolve around her and the moon will not pick up her laundry.

I tell her it is my job, as her mother, to teach her rules and limits, and to expect—no, demand—more of her, when it comes to her role as citizen of the world….

At bedtime, I smush my face against her cheek in an exaggerated mushy kiss. I freeze like this. She first ignores me, then sets her book down.

“You’re giving me a bruise,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m giving you love. So you can’t miss it. So you can’t say your mother didn’t love you.”

Grudgingly, she smiles.

I like to think that I am giving her a safe place to duke it out. I like to think that our squawking has a purpose. That our fighting teaches her that love can endure fighting, a good scrap now and then.

So I will take grudging smiles, the eye rolls, the heavy sighs, the “everybody elses” and the “nobody elses” that plague her already ruined existence (if you listen to her).

I can take grudging. I can bear grudging, if the conclusion—eventually—is a grudging, “My mom was nuts, but she loved me. She does love me.” I don’t know that that is what the conclusion will be, but my gut tells me—in spite of everything, the “other things” of which my father spoke—my gut still tells me that something of my intuition, my instinct, has remained intact.

So I wait. I watch. I holler my head off. I am mother. Hear me roar, then hear me soothe. Watch me screw up, marvelously. Then watch me try, try, always try, to make it better.

Take it from the top, Maestro Mama. Again. Again. Again.”