Mothers and Daughters

The years between 1997 and 2006 were the most authentic years I’ve ever lived, the years in which I was most present, and most rooted.  They were the years between the ages of 35 and 44 for me; 4 and 13 for my daughter.  They were the years when she and I were the most important people in each other’s lives. The years before I brought someone new into our world. The years before she did.

They were the years when we had no one but each other. We were a family of two. Eventually we would get a cat, who would extend our circle of love. Three girls we were; utterly devoted to each other.  Girls for whom paradise was coming together again at the end of a busy day: taking comfort in the warmth and weight of each other’s bodies: the three of us sharing a couch, sharing a bed, making a life.

I remember well one Victoria Day weekend.  My daughter was maybe 5 or 6. Clocks had sprung forward. The days were longer now. Children played on the street until 9 o’clock. Summer was around the corner. Hearts were light. We heard fireworks outside, and saw from the bedroom window that the neighbourhood kids were running with sparklers and somebody had bought some do-it-yourself fireworks.  I was unexpectedly overcome with a wave of sadness as my daughter and I looked out at the children laughing and chasing each other in front of our house. It was the first time I thought that maybe we weren’t enough.  Maybe she and I were living too small a life.  Shouldn’t she be outside too?  Shouldn’t someone have invited her to join them?

It had been easy when I was a kid.  I had a sister.  If we saw that we were missing out on fun, we could march off together to where the fun was happening and work our way into the centre of it. We had each other.  But my daughter was an only child. It wasn’t so easy to join a crowd of children who were already engaged in some activity, playing a game for which they already had enough players. At least it wouldn’t have been easy for me….and it wasn’t easy for her.

I had two overwhelming feelings of ineptitude that evening. First that I had not encouraged my child to make friends on our street. Was I supposed to do that? Should I have been organizing play dates and getting to know other mothers?  My daughter went to a school that wasn’t in our neighbourhood- it was across Highway 10- the closest school I could find that had a spot available in the after-school program.  She didn’t know the kids on our street.  She didn’t see them in the hallways. She didn’t play with them at recess or walk to and from school with them.  She didn’t know their names. Was I a negligent parent? Should I have been pushing her out the door after supper saying “Go outside and play”, instead of doing the Postman Pat puzzle, and drawing pictures together, and playing “the grown-up conversation game”- the one where I’d have tea, and she’d have hot chocolate and we’d role play: two tired women complaining about our bosses, and our wayward children and our husbands.

The second overwhelming feeling I had that night was that I was only pretending to be competent at parenting….that I didn’t really know what I was doing…that I was making it up as I went along without any sort of overarching parenting philosophy. Was I ruining her?  Was it okay that she loved being with me so much and that I gave her all of me?  There were no alternative relationships for her. I loved my own mother deeply as a child, but I had a father and a sister, and my family had consisted of multiple configurations of couplings and triads at any given time.

We had only each other, day after day, week after week, month after month.  We had rituals that seemed to last for years: the dinosaur sprinkles hidden in her breakfast, the annual tradition of her hiding her head under my sweater when the Christmas carol in a minor key was playing, giving each other a kiss every time we came to a bridge in Cullen gardens. And when we lay together in bed, calling out “TEE-kee-la”, “TEE-kee-meister”, we reveled in the completeness of our circle when the cat came running up the stairs at the sound of her name being called - jumping up to join us in bed.

We had inside jokes:  “I coulda hit that… if I was Yao Ming” (if I’d served the birdie too high for her, when we played badminton in our little backyard), “Meet you by the Three Blond Serbian Women” (the spot on the street where’d we arrange to meet after school- the spot where three blond women congregated daily to chitchat. We decided they were Serbian, but I don’t remember why).  And there was “sketchy Filipino guy.” And “my sister’s name is Bethlehem Manger”. And so so many memories that are exclusively ours. There is no one else to recite the memories with, to debate the chronological order with, to laugh over with. They belong to us alone: singing the theme song to Arthur while jumping on the bed, the snowman that we named Dimanche because we made him on a Sunday, our hamster having babies, the poncho made from a cut-up towel that she wore when we listened to the Bolivian flute music, the Arts and Crafts ‘store’ that she ran out of our basement- ringing up the customer’s bills on her toy cash register.

And the years passed. And the seasons came and went. How many Septembers did we buy school supplies?  How many Decembers did we hang decorations on the tree?  How many Aprils did we hide- and find- Easter eggs? How many Julys did we go to Canada’s Wonderland?

How can those years have slipped away so fast?  Such busy years. Her with swimming lessons, skating lessons, karate…guitar…dance. Me with working, studying, getting a Masters degree and then a PhD.  Falling into bed exhausted at night. Being awakened too early by a little girl who wanted to play the polar bear game under the covers; me agreeing as long as we could pretend to be hibernating so I could go back to sleep.

The days are long, but the years are fast.  I wish I’d have understood that one day they’d be over and there would be no getting them back. I must have known that would happen.  Surely I knew that it wouldn’t be just the two of us forever. Surely I recognized that we’d both have other lives that would call us away from each other.  Yet it came as a surprise.  There was not enough warning. It didn’t happen the way I thought it would….that we’d know at exactly the same time that it was coming to an end…that we’d talk about it and analyze it and prepare for it together.  I must have thought we’d ease into it, so slowly that the pain would barely register.  Instead it was the ripping of bone from marrow.

I tell myself that there are good years ahead…that I have much more to do…that no woman is ever only a mother…that I’ve found love again with a good man and that there are more memories to be made.  This will be my time.  I’ve done my job. My child is grown. She is a woman, strong, beautiful, fiercely intelligent.  She does not belong to me anymore.  Nor I to her.

But sometimes…on quiet evenings, I hear our two voices, calling out for the kitty to come to bed with us. And sometimes when I am driving home …to my new home … I am disoriented.  I drive right past it- headed where? I don’t know.  To her? To another time? To the years when we were everything to each other? When we needed nothing else? And then I am afraid I will never stop wanting those years back again.

2017 in lavender fields

 

2007 Singing/Playing together

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