(I) Looked up. I looked to the preschool and the lake, waiting for the bolt of lightening to strike me dead. When it did not, I wrote for the next house and a half about the women in my family. I wrote about being neglected, about being uncared for as a Chile. I wrote about my mother’s distraction. I wrote about how true nurturing was never modeled to me. How motherhood seemed to be the last thing on everyone’s agenda in my family. And when I wrote “in my family” I meat one thing: my mother.
Theo P. Nestor, Writing is My Drink
Funny, I first read this book in 2014 and somehow, this section went straight over my head. Maybe then, ten years after my mother’s death, I wasn’t ready for a truth like this, but now 21 years afterwards, it’s time. And maybe it was a generational truth for some of us older Gen X-ers – our mothers stuck in the pre-feminist era did not feel they had choices. Motherhood happened, whether they liked it or not, the consequence of the other non-choices of their lives – marriage, etc. Sure, women in the 70’s were starting to make other choices, but not in the more conservative communities. Communities bound by behavioral pacts written by the men whether they be the preachers of the evangelical south or the priests of the Italian Catholic communities that had newly immigrated and wanted desperately to fit in and prosper in the new country.
Mother-daughter relationships are usually fraught with some kind of drama, from either side, the mother’s who didn’t want to be mothers, or only did what was expected, and the daughters who wanted to listen to advice from outside the tribe/church/community. This is why we have fiction, to see what could have happened, if daughters felt other than how they were raised.
I am thinking about all of this as I work on a novel about the last few weeks of my mother’s life, a week of horror and hilarity
(If you like morbid humor) in equal doses. I was tooling along with a rather emotionally flat story and this quote popped into my life. And my book has to change in the light of this new realization, this new truth. That motherhood truly was the last thing on her agenda, that not only did she not model nurturing to me, no one had done that for her either, so maybe I needed to forgive her ignorance? That no one in her past ever prioritized motherhood, so why should she? Ugh, off to work on draft four.
Welcome to my latest exercise in an attempt to reach my goal of being a prolific writer in 2025. So, in addition to writing 1 short story each week (Because Ray Bradbury said you can’t write 52 bad ones – challenge accepted!) I will post an entry from my Commonplace book and a short note on why the quote spoke to me on that day. I can hear you now – sucky stories and random quotes? Sign me up.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that sometimes we have to “age” into an understanding that once escaped us? I suspect mother/daughter relationships are fraught for almost every woman, but when there is a generational lack of modeling of nurturance, I think it can be especially complicated. Good for you exploring where forgiveness might fit into the equation now.
I’ve been thinking about this from a different angle, since my brother revealed how patriarchal my dad was when my brother was young. He behaved as his father had, probably. By the time I came along (8 years later) he was much more his real self, rather than ‘trying to be a proper father’.
And yes, my mum had similar problems to your descriptions. I only knew I didn’t want to be like that… and fortunately nobody made me conform to the stereotype.
The Story Factory 
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that sometimes we have to “age” into an understanding that once escaped us? I suspect mother/daughter relationships are fraught for almost every woman, but when there is a generational lack of modeling of nurturance, I think it can be especially complicated. Good for you exploring where forgiveness might fit into the equation now.
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I’ve been thinking about this from a different angle, since my brother revealed how patriarchal my dad was when my brother was young. He behaved as his father had, probably. By the time I came along (8 years later) he was much more his real self, rather than ‘trying to be a proper father’.
And yes, my mum had similar problems to your descriptions. I only knew I didn’t want to be like that… and fortunately nobody made me conform to the stereotype.
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Here from the A-Z and enjoyed reading your thought provoking post. All the best.
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