By Laura Jean Bhadra
There are no manuals on how to be a mother. The majority of new moms have quick access to the most natural teacher, their own moms via phone calls, emails, or a short drive. However, for those of us whose mothers are dead or otherwise unavailable, we must turn to other mom-like influences, parenting classes, or the memories of how our mothers parented us. This last is what I find myself reflecting and relying upon time after time as I face the challenges and joys of raising my own family.
In many ways, my mother set standards that I could never live up to. She was a fabulous cook, patient and imaginative with ingredients, best with Italian classics but often trying new recipes. She made tomato sauce from scratch. Though I tried for many years, my sauce never remotely approached hers or even made it to Ragu level. She stuffed fresh mushrooms rather than buying frozen ones at Costco. She chopped up real clams, bread crumbs and seasonings and baked them in real clam shells that she would afterwards wash and re-use. She knew how to make osco bosco, which I cant even pronounce.
Her fitted sheets were folded absolutely flat in the linen closet. Within the linen closet, each towel was folded in threes and lined up in irreproachable rows. She dusted her photos and polished her furniture every week. She made beds by lying the sheet downside up under the coverlet and then turning the sheet over the top of the coverlet to display its pattern, even and unwrinkled.
She ironed tablecloths. Her beautiful scarves nestled in her drawers, scented with sachets. Her jewelry box was neat and orderly. Her room was covered with pictures of her children and grandchildren, with a large wooden rosary hanging over the bed.
Fortunately, my mother was not perfect in every respect. She didn’t know how to sew, or even knit. She couldn’t make French braids, or even very good ordinary braids. I can still remember the bobby pins digging in my head at my First Communion from her inept placement of my veil. We never did arts and crafts projects with her at home.
At McDonalds, she wouldn’t order her own French fries, saying she didn’t want any, and end up eating half of mine. She would never use up an entire onion, or carrot, or tomato, but would cut up part and carefully wrap the rest, place it in the vegetable bin, and throw it out three weeks later when it had rotted enough.
She tried to wear contact lens for awhile, but no matter how many times I explained it to her, she could never understand the difference between disinfecting and enzyme cleaning, and why both were important.
She didn’t know how to put on eyeliner and mascara, or curl her hair with a curling iron, or straighten it with a blow drier. She sometimes walked around the house in her bathrobe. Sometimes, around noon, she would remark, I haven’t even had time to comb my hair. (I found the idea of not combing your hair first thing in the morning incomprehensible until, of course, I had children of my own.)
My mother passed away three years ago, at age 70, when I was 35, my son was 3 and I was four months pregnant with my daughter. I still miss her many things about her. I miss buying presents for her. When I bought a flannel nightgown or sundress for myself I would always buy another for her, usually the same pattern but a different color. She was so easy to buy for, or maybe I just knew what she liked.
I miss calling her up to ask her how long and at what temperature I should cook the roast beef. I miss telling her that Sara weighed 17 pounds 9 ounces at her last checkup, that my root canal was horrible, or that some idiot honked at me for not making a left turn at a red light. I still don’t know if she cooked the garlic before adding it to broccoli, or added it raw after the broccoli was already cooked, and now I can never ask her. No one else remembers if I had chicken pox as a child or not. I want to brag to her that my two year old gave up her bottle and marvel with her that my son is starting kindergarten in September.
My mother was not a perfect mother, but she was a very good one. As I go through the process of mothering my own children, now without a mother of my own, I realize more and more what a good mother she was. Paradoxically, one of the reasons she was a good mother is that even though she considered raising her children the most important of her life’s work, she was still a person before she was a mother. Though we never doubted that she loved all of us kids, it was understood that she and my father came first with each other. They remained partners within our family structure, and we were never allowed to come between them. I see now how that is with my own husband and children, and I admire now what I took for granted growing up, the primacy of the husband-wife bond, even above the mother-child one.
When my father came home, dinner was on the table within 15 minutes. (Another accomplishment that I only now appreciate the difficulty of!) Then it was dinnertime, and it didn’t matter if you were right in the middle of, or almost at the end of, Laverne and Shirley, because the TV went off and you sat down at the table. There was no such thing as negotiation over it. We didn’t get special meals made for us kids, either. If you didn’t like what was being served, you could make yourself a peanut butter sandwich. My mother did not see herself as a short order cook, and you only got meals at mealtime. If you were hungry in between, you got an apple (plus a lecture if you hadn’t eaten enough lunch.)
Because my mother was a person first I show that side of myself to my children. My mothering flows naturally from who I am. The times when I try to fit myself into some ideal mold of a super mom are the times when my parenting feels most awkward and unsuccessful. Like my mom, I don’t do arts and crafts with my kids, because I’m not very good at them.
I swim with them, fish with them, read with them, take them bike riding - all things that I like myself. Selfish, maybe, but honest. I don’t feel guilty when I don’t cook them separate meals, give them a TV in their room, or refuse to hire a magician for their 5 year birthday party.
Because my mother was such a good mother, I try to be one too. I try to remember that I am the adult, the way she was when I was growing up. Whatever adult problems she had, we didn’t hear about them, and solving them, or even listening to them, was not our job or our responsibility. If I have money anxieties or a fight with my husband or a medical procedure, I share with friends, not my kids. I try to remember that its my job to love my kids the best that I can, not to have them love me the way that I want. I try to remember that they are not my whole life, and I am not theirs, and that my husband and I will hopefully be together long after they have left the parental nest.
Because my mother was the mother she was, I am the mother I am. I still have her with me, her voice nudging and guiding me. My mothers voice inside me tells me that I’m doing the best I can with my children, that even though I’m not a perfect mom, I’m doing a good job.
* The authors mother was born Anna Marie Pepe in 1931 in Derby, Connecticut, the third child following two sons in an Italian Catholic family. After finishing her degree as a registered nurse, she married Richard Malinauskas at the age of 24 and raised three children.
Published U. S. Legacies July 2005
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