Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Dear Mom,

There are so many things I miss about you, I can’t begin to tally them all, but today, I miss being able to call you up and complain about my life.

I’m on the other end of the mom continuum now, I know the drill: my daughters call me, they’re upset about something, they tell me their troubles, I comfort them. That’s how it works. I don’t question their motives or strategies, I don’t suggest alternatives. It’s not my job to tell them what they've done wrong, it's my job to tell them that they are absolutely right, always, in every situation. Very occasionally I might suggest a slightly different approach, not because my daughters are WRONG – they are never wrong - but because the world is full of assholes who obviously don’t understand this basic, universal truth. Sometimes, I explain to my girls, you have to humor these idiots to get what you need.

Then we laugh and talk about what’s really going on. I listen closely for clues and labor mightily to keep my solutions to myself. They don’t call me for solutions, they call because they need to hear their mama tell them that everything is going to be OK. So, that’s what I tell them. I like to think that, more often than not, they hang up the phone with a load off their mind and a new sense of purpose. I know I did when my mother used to say the same things to me.

I understand that this is not a two-way street. I can’t cry on my girls' shoulders; it would upend the natural order, rob them of their trust. They would never be able to lean on me again, and that’s the worst tragedy I can imagine. I can’t talk to Mr. Oblivious, the man for whom the phrase “the sound of silence” was invented. There’s no one left in my life I can pour my heart out to, no-one who will listen intently without judgement and tell me in every situation that everything is OK.

Mama, whenever I was sad, sick, sore, sorry, whenever I couldn’t see my way clear through the darkness and despair, you’d tell me that everything was OK. You'd say, “don’t let ‘em beat you. Don’t let ‘em keep you down.” You knew whereof you spoke, didn’t you? Those words came from deep experience. I’m feeling beaten down today and god, do I wish I could hear your voice.

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