And mothers are their daughters’ role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.
~Victoria Secunda
I don’t know which job is harder: being a good parent or being a good child. But something happened recently to show me that if you’re good at being one of them, chances are you are good at the other. Jennifer was twelve and Carrie was nine when my parents came from Florida to live with us. Red-haired, sneaker-wearing Grandma Mona, the woman who sewed a hundred nametapes into all of their clothes each summer before camp; who, when we moved out of town, traveled 800 miles from New York to Georgia just for the weekend to celebrate their birthdays; who always smelled of Juicy Fruit and Ivory soap, had cancer.
The year she spent with us was difficult for everyone. Watching someone you love grow sicker is always painful, but when it goes on for months and it’s happening right in your own house, it’s especially hard. Home was always the most comfortable and safest place in the universe. No more. As a daughter, I did my best to treat my mother the way I imagined she would treat me if the situations were reversed. Nothing was ever more important to her than protecting, supporting and guiding me through life. I never doubted that she thought of me as her greatest accomplishment. Now I was in a position to prove I could give the same love back to her. Except that I had two daughters and a husband and a job and a house and if I put her first, I pretty much had to shove everyone else to the back burner.
Doctor’s appointments and hospital stays conflicted with dance recitals and soccer games. Jen and Carrie said they understood when I didn’t show up, but I still felt lousy. It seemed like every day I was making a choice about who was more important, and it was never my husband or children. What kind of lesson was I teaching my girls? I worried about missing almost a year of clapping in the bleachers and shopping at the mall. I started dreaming about the most ordinary of times… a typical weeknight dinner with the family, exchanging jokes and speaking in the kind of shorthand only those intimately connected could understand.
Then one day the doctor agreed to let my mother return to Florida for a few weeks between chemotherapy treatments. We were thrilled that she felt well enough to go and excited at the idea of being just us once again. Passover was coming up the following week and we got busy preparing for a traditional holiday celebration.
About 4:00, the day before the first Seder, the phone rang. The kitchen was a mess, with pots simmering, eggs boiling, stacks of the good dishes ready to be put on the table, and boxes of matzos waiting to be opened. It was my father calling from a hospital in Florida. My mother’s blood count had fallen to a dangerously low level and she was admitted for emergency transfusions. It wasn’t life threatening at this point but they couldn’t promise how quickly she’d respond.
“Just tell her not to worry. I’ll be there as soon as I can catch a flight,” I heard my voice say automatically.
I hung up the phone. No one said a word.
“I’m so sorry,” I began, suddenly remembering all the plans we had made for the school vacation coming up the next week. How we were going to catch up on eight months worth of cuddles and make Rice Krispy Treats and buy new sneakers. “But I have to go.”
The next few hours passed in a blur. By 8:30 that night I was on a plane to Fort Lauderdale. As the plane climbed into the sky, I looked out the window and thought about how unfair life can be.All I wanted was to be with my family. I couldn’t bear disappointing them one more time.
My eyes filled and I searched my pocketbook for a tissue. Instead I pulled out a piece of Jennifer’s stationery, carefully folded in half. “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOU’RE IN THE AIR!” Carrie’s oversized, green Magic Marker bubble writing warned. My heart beat faster as I unfolded the note.
Please try not to worry about us; we’ll be fine. We are both so proud of the kind of daughter you are. And we just wanted you to know we think that it’s inherited.
Love, Jennifer and Carrie
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Sometimes, when you’re a mom, the lesson you think you’re teaching is not the one being learned. And sometimes that’s a very good thing.
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