{"id":1025,"date":"2017-06-19T21:03:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T01:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2019-06-17T05:44:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:44:29","slug":"the-invincible-mm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/the-invincible-mm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invincible MM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

A few years back, a well-intentioned therapist probing my history for signposts tried to steer me down the Mother Track.\u00a0 It must be routine and fruitful territory in her line of work.\u00a0 It was high on her list of questions, and she seemed mildly surprised by my responses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you resent your mother when you were growing up?\u201d\u00a0 she began.\u00a0 Not that I can recall, I answered.\u00a0 \u201cWas your mother around when you needed her?\u201d it continued.\u00a0 My mother was ill for a period of time when I was an adolescent, but otherwise, always, I replied.\u00a0 She tried one more time: \u201cDid you feel that your mother understood you?\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take me long to resent the implication that most people have Mother Issues.\u00a0 Therefore, if I didn\u2019t readily confess some, I must be in denial.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother is a lovely person,\u201d I countered, impatient at this presumption.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI can barely remember arguing with her over anything that mattered.\u00a0 She\u2019s kind to everyone, including us.\u00a0 Everyone loves her\u2014puppies, babies, men, appliance repair people, tax accountants, everybody. \u201d<\/p>\n

She took the hint and moved on, but I pondered the question later, searching my heart to make sure I wasn\u2019t ignoring something important.\u00a0 Did Mom miss any major milestones in my life?\u00a0 I pictured her leaning over the gurney when I was being wheeled in to deliver my daughter.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Did she favor one of the four of us over others?\u00a0 My younger sister was her kindred spirit, the soul most like hers of all her children, so it always seemed they understood each other on a deeper level.\u00a0 Did that connection serve to deprive the rest of us?\u00a0 I can\u2019t see it that way.\u00a0 Did she disapprove of my choice of husband?\u00a0 Maybe, but she kept it to herself and adopted him as one of her own, succeeding far better in understanding him than I did as a wife.\u00a0 She grieved when we divorced, but never criticized that life-changing fracture in the family.<\/p>\n

So, maybe it defines me as an outlier when it comes to Five Therapeutic Fundamentals that Work for Most of Us, but I loved my mother growing up.\u00a0 However, emulating her was something else altogether.<\/p>\n

\"\"In the cultural tumult of the Sixties and Seventies, when the roles of women changed forever, we so often thought (sometimes rightly, sometimes not) we knew better than the previous generation. I never really wanted a life like hers.\u00a0 While she would be the first to point out she was not born to such things, my mother was, in my eyes, bridge and country clubs, stunning ball gowns and cocktail parties—while I was smoky blues bars, horse barns, jeans and bandanas, and bad boys.\u00a0 Our family of six lived comfortably on my father\u2019s income, while I instinctively knew I would always have to pay my own way.\u00a0 As a working mother, later a single one, I juggled priorities that sometimes seemed a world away from Mom\u2019s daily life, through no fault of either of us.\u00a0 It was easy to assume that my father, in our traditional family structure of the era, was the tough one in the family.<\/p>\n

Most likely I was too absorbed in my own problems, in too much of a hurry, too perennially distracted to develop the wisdom to appreciate my mother\u2019s character.\u00a0 Instead, I saw myself as different, not really cut from the cloth of her lifestyle and traditional family roles that were so easy, in those heady times, to disregard.\u00a0 Maybe daughters always think they know more about their parents than they really do.\u00a0 Could I ever be the person she was and is, or should I be?<\/p>\n

The circle of life brought that question back around recently.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The phone rang early on Sunday morning, on Mother\u2019s Day, ironically.\u00a0 The screen showed my brother\u2019s name and photo, and my stomach clenched.\u00a0 When one has elderly parents, it is never a good thing when the phone rings at an unexpected hour.\u00a0 Sure enough, this was one of those.\u00a0 My brother, a veteran of many difficult phone calls, kindly began with the encouraging end of the painful news.\u00a0 \u201cMom\u2019s OK now, but we thought you\u2019d want to know she fell during the night,\u201d he reported.\u00a0 \u201cShe banged herself up pretty good, bruised her wrist badly and cut her forehead, but thankfully, nothing was broken.\u00a0 We took her to the hospital, just to be sure everything checked out OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

How is she now?\u00a0 I asked fearfully.\u00a0 Sore?\u00a0 Confused?\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sure she will be sore tomorrow,\u201d he said, \u201cbut she said she is fine and seems like she really is.\u201d<\/p>\n

I called her a couple of hours later, anxious to hear her voice for myself.\u00a0 \u201cMy arm is throbbing a little bit,\u201d she admitted, \u201cbut nothing that a couple of ibuprofen won\u2019t take care of.\u00a0 I can handle that.\u201d\u00a0 That last sentence was delivered with the slight edge that emerges in her voice when the point is not to be mistaken or disputed.<\/p>\n

My sister, who like my brother lives just a few minutes from Mom, dropped by with her husband to check in later, then delivered another update.\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t see the cut on her head, I promise,\u201d she confirmed.\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s wearing the sweater you gave her for her birthday, with pearls, and I swear she looks fine.\u201d\u00a0 She\u2019s wearing pearls?\u00a0 I echoed, amazed.\u00a0 After being at the ER in the middle of the night?\u00a0 My sister sent the photo above as evidence.\u00a0 She captioned it The Invincible MM.\u00a0 (MM is short for MartyMom, the name her grandchildren call her.)<\/p>\n

What, I wondered for the umpteenth time in the last couple of years, gives a person that kind of strength?<\/p>\n

Surely, the circumstances of upbringing generate roots for the character.\u00a0 Born in the spring of 1931, my mother is a young member of what journalist Tom Brokaw christened The Greatest Generation<\/em><\/strong> in his book of the same name.\u00a0 Mom was too young to have immediate contemporaries fighting in World War II, but plenty old enough to have experienced and remembered the sacrifices and the preceding Depression. \u00a0Brokaw described the age group this way: \u201cIt may be historically premature to judge the greatness of a whole generation, but indisputably, there are common traits that cannot be denied. It is a generation that, by and large, made no demands of homage from those who followed and prospered economically, politically, and culturally because of its sacrifices. It is a generation of towering achievement and modest demeanor, a legacy of their formative years when they were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the times in which she has lived, there are the bonds of love and family that serve to mold the soul.\u00a0 An only child adored by parents, aunts, uncles, and countless friends, my mother left her parents\u2019 home to marry a man who loved and cared for her for nearly seventy years\u2014literally, in sickness and in health, until they were parted by death.\u00a0 Not that there weren\u2019t tough times.\u00a0 Every family has them, and ours was no different, though the bonds were not weakened by circumstance.\u00a0 Does a foundation of unwavering love inspire a lifetime of courage and good humor, stalwart good spirits in the face of suffering?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible not to look inward with these questions.\u00a0 Will I have that determination and grace if the fates allow me to reach my mid-eighties?\u00a0 Deep in my heart, I am skeptical.\u00a0 Self-pity and slights claim me all too quickly; remembering the many blessings of my own family and life is a daily effort in which I don\u2019t always triumph. What if I become one of the grouchy ones, whose pain and isolation drive wedges between them and those who love them best?\u00a0 Is it too late to hope something of my mother is inside there, deep down?<\/p>\n

It is funny to think, at the age of sixty, that it\u2019s finally time.\u00a0 I want to be more like my mother, when I grow up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years back, a well-intentioned therapist probing my history for signposts tried to steer me down the Mother Track.\u00a0 It must be routine and fruitful territory in her line of work.\u00a0 It was high on her list of questions, and she seemed mildly surprised by my responses. \u201cDid you resent your mother when you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aging-parents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmachronicles.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}