Tea and Perspective on Mothers and Daughters

Yesterday morning I had tea and biscuits with two charming little girls, three and five and their writer stay-at-home mom. Actually, the girls had milk and bite-sized chocolate bears with milk, but were allowed to sample our gingery biscuits.

These are lucky children; well-loved, disciplined to a point that they are well-behaved but not discouraged to speak freely. Their creativity is encouraged. A quick argument over a ball is resolved with fairness; each is encouraged to take turns. They are eager to show their dollies, or their colouring books. They are bright children, often surprising me with their vocabularies and memories.

This morning on waking I thought of the mom gathering the littler one in her arms after a fall from a chair. Tears disappeared quickly. A few minutes later she made a ruling over a gift. Their mom is only slightly younger than my daughter. As we sipped our tea, I had nothing but admiration for her. But then I realised to her daughters she is an all powerful being able to withhold chocolate teddy bears, decider of who gets what, controller of bedtimes, walks and everything that happens in their lives.

The next jump in my thoughts as I spent the last few precious moments in bed was how much power I gave my own mother over me. Only when I watched her ashes spiral into the air on a spring April day in the woods behind her apartment, did I realise it was me that gave the bits of dust the power once I was an adult.

Munchkin, the cat, looked at me, trying to decide if she wanted to encourage me to get up to let her out. She settled down with her tail over her nose, and I went back to my own musings. This time I thought of my own daughter, over whom I once had the same control of chocolate and milk, bedtimes, television viewing, everything. Today any power I have over her, not that I want any, is of her own relinquishing to me. Both she and this stay-at-home mom-writer are adults with their own ways to find as I had to find mine.

The stay-at-home mom as she metes out discipline and love is not interested in power. She wants her daughters to develop into what they can be and knows loves and fairness is the way to help them along the road. Sometime in the future these two little girls will have to deal with developing their own independence and maybe they will fight to be free of the woman that once had so much power over their lives, power that the mom never saw it as power, but as love. Love is not about power, it only exists as one person allows the other to have it.

In that house, around the kitchen table looking out on the countryside, there is love. There is a re-enactment of lives for eons between women and their children, little daily events like milk and cookies, talks and games, but each in its own way is special.

I hope when those two little girls are grown they and their mother develop a relationship of appreciation. They may not remember yesterday’s rainy March day, but the feelings created will be part of them. The mom will not be able to solve their adult hurts with hugs, she will not be able to negotiate their lives, but she will have given them the skills for them to do it themselves not because she is powerful, but because she is loving.