Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

by Claire Fontaine

  Part of the “quarter-life crisis”—this feeling that our lives have no meaning—probably comes from not participating in the kinds of meaningful activities we were often spoon-fed growing up, and then had at our fingertips in college. Living on our own, many of us seem to have opted for what’s easiest to access: the Internet, parties, the gym, TV, and dating (or, rather, hooking up).

  Alanna, my former roommate and partner in couch-potato crime, put it well when she said early adulthood isn’t just about adjusting to fiscal responsibility but social responsibility as well, establishing the difference between relaxation and having fun and being plain lazy. Free time is just that, activities that make you feel free, as opposed to guilty, lazy, and mildly useless.

  Sometimes lessons I learned in that school as a teen are like time-release medications; I’ll forget all about something I learned until it’s suddenly staring me in the eyes. In this case, the lesson is twofold; one, there’s almost always a discrepancy between how you view yourself and how you actually are, and, two, to stay on track it’s imperative to regularly check in with, and evaluate, yourself—as long as you do it neutrally and without judgment, which is where a lot of us get stuck.

  We’re hard-wired to avoid pain; if you beat yourself up every time you evaluate or examine yourself and your life, it makes you less likely to do it at all, which means you’ll probably keep doing more of the same.

  It’s more crowded than usual today on the bluff and my mom and I squish together into an open space, resting our elbows on the ledge overlooking the plaza below. Her hand touches mine lightly and I look at it. She’s always joked about having old lady hands even as a kid, which I can believe because even though she’s always had very firm, smooth olive skin, the veins have always been extremely prominent. I used to play with them when I was little, pressing on a big blue wiggly one and then watching it puff back up when I let go. Looking at her hands now, she has no age spots, but the smooth olive skin is thinner, with fine wrinkles in places. It seems like her hands and arms are beginning to catch up with her veins. It’s one more thing that makes me realize that I’m not just beginning to see the passage of time on my mother’s body, I’m going to continue to from now on. The days of her looking pretty much the same to me are no more.

  Earlier this week, my mom and I were at Chrystelle’s house for dinner when I saw a photo from Chrystelle’s wedding with my mom in it. She was tan from walking outdoors all summer, her black hair just beginning to grow out of the pixie cut she always wore. She still has that dress, a long black shift with spaghetti straps and embroidered gold accents that looks almost Egyptian. It’s one of the few things I’ve never been able to talk her into giving me.

  I looked up from the photo at my mom and Chrystelle talking in the kitchen, and was startled by the difference. She hasn’t looked as she did in that photo for several years now, but for some reason I still picture her that way. When I hear the word “mother,” what first comes to mind is an energetic woman with short hair, a mostly black wardrobe, and signature red lipstick. I don’t picture my mom as she is today, calmer, more self-possessed, a softened facial expression, and shoulder-length hair that’s jet-black except for two thick gray stripes at her forehead she’s let grow in because she got sick of touching up the roots every few days. “I never thought I’d end up looking like Cruella De Vil,” she lamented. She looks young for her age but (and she’ll probably kill me for saying this) the skin under her neck is softer.

  What startled me even more, though, was that as I looked at her I was suddenly able to picture how she’ll look when she’s old. I saw her with her hair fully gray, her eyes a tapestry of wrinkles, her hands freckled with age spots. Knowing in a back-of-your-mind sort of way that your mother isn’t so young anymore is quite different from knowing in a way that hits you in your gut that she’s actually aging.

  And right there, with music playing, and Antoine laughing, and my mother and Chrystelle talking in the kitchen, tears welled up because I suddenly knew how I’d feel when she’s gone. I understood that when she goes my world will never be the same. Because even if I have ten children, even if I’m wildly in love with my husband and surrounded by friends, there will never be someone who understands or loves me quite like my mother, or that I love like her.

  Something changed for me after that. I’ve been nicer to her, and more patient. I’ve wanted to be physically near her, rest my head on her shoulder or hold her hand. I feel more love toward her, and I wish it hadn’t taken imagining my life without her to coax that from me.

  The small town of Apt is home to a candy shop called La Bonbonnière, and this morning my mom and I rented a car for the express purpose of buying one particular candy sold strictly there: la Gourmandize, a glowing orange half-dome consisting of a candied clementine, marzipan, honey, and dark chocolate.

  We park and, without consulting the position of the sun, the direction of the wind, the side of the tree moss grows on, or any other of her famed orienteering skills, my mom beelines toward Mecca. We stock up on les Gourmandizes, and then buy some gelato to enjoy now.

  “I did this exact same thing with Jordana my first time here,” my mom says contentedly, remembering a trip she took with a girlfriend some years back. “We bought those same orange candies, sat on this same bench, and I had the same flavor of gelato.”

  “Chestnut?”

  “Yes. Here,” she says, scooping some onto a spoon and handing it to me. “What does that taste like to you?”

  “Why do you always say things like that? I just want to enjoy it, not rack my brain for adjectives!”

  “That’s the whole point, you’re not supposed to rack your brain! Your best metaphors come from feelings, not thoughts. Don’t think in terms of sweet or bitter—what do you see and feel when you put it in your mouth? To me, chestnuts are like clouds and honey.”

  It’s a good description, light, sweet, fluffy. But who thinks of metaphors in the middle of eating ice cream? This drives me crazy sometimes, but it’s what makes her her. I love the writing process, I enjoy crafting prose and researching and editing. But it’s something I do. Being a writer is who she is.

  And I like that she’s sharing it with me. It’s small, mentioning her first trip here or telling me what chestnut reminds her of, but it’s the kind of thought she usually keeps to herself. Yesterday while we were at the bus stop she said out of the blue that she always loved the song “Bus Stop” by the Hollies because that’s what she thought love would be like when she was a young teen. I knew the song, it’s about a man who covers a woman with his umbrella after seeing her in the rain at a bus stop. They met at the bus stop each day after that, and by the end of the summer they were together.

  I smiled, picturing her with naïve notions of love, with naïve notions of anything for that matter. She’s always been drawn toward darker and more complex characters and stories, and it was such a sweet, simple image.

  I’ve tended to view myself as the ever-changing variable, and my mother as the more stable constant, perhaps because there are few women we make as many assumptions about than our mothers. But she’s continually surprising me now, from once-naïve romantic notions to almost becoming a doctor to having a conversation with a man, in German (which I had no idea she spoke), to a possible singing career.

  A remix of Joan Baez’s “The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti” started playing at Bar les Célestins the other day, and my mom asked if I recognized it, because she used to sing it to me as a lullaby. I didn’t, but it prompted me to ask her if she ever took singing lessons, because she has an operatic voice. As it turns out, she did, from the man who sometimes coached Barbra Streisand, no less—and who wanted her to pursue it professionally.

  “And you said no?! Why? People would kill for that opportunity, Mom.”

  “I thought about it, but I was so shy back then,” she answered, shrugging. “And I certainly wasn’t cut out for the lifestyle. I’m usually asleep by the time most performances begin.
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  “How come you never told me this before?” I asked. “I love hearing about this!”

  “I don’t know, the subject never came up, and it’s not something I really ever think about—it was so long ago. Besides, you never ask, why would I think you’d want to know?”

  Well, I do want to know, and told her so. Even as she’s increasingly forthcoming, however, things remain unspoken, and I still often stop myself from asking her what she’s thinking. Yesterday she stopped suddenly outside of a knit shop and lightly smacked herself on the forehead.

  “Mia, we missed it—the knitting festival was last weekend. How could I let myself forget that?” she added, almost more to herself than to me.

  It was written all over her face how disappointed and angry she was with herself. I felt terrible. She loves anything to do with yarn or knitting, because it makes her feel close with Bubbie; I know how much she misses her. She thinks I don’t notice but there are times she’ll stop midsentence because she knows if she keeps talking she’ll start crying.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, maybe we can—” I started to tell her.

  “Oh, look at those shoes!” she interrupted me brightly, and marched into a store with a big soldes (sale) sign on the window. I felt exasperated that she just completely changed subjects but maybe that had nothing to do with a level of trust between us and more to do with her having a good day and not wanting to think about something that made her sad.

  I’ve always felt bad about my mother and grandmother’s rocky relationship, especially because Bubbie and I have always gotten along. She’s whip-smart, loves desserts and sweets as much as I do, and has a wicked sense of humor. Bub can also be feisty and tends toward blunt honesty—something I find amusing and endearing. I dislike emotional guesswork, and you’d have to be blind, deaf, or dumb not to know how Bubbie feels about something. My mom finds this aspect of her mother’s personality far less amusing; it’s been a source of much tension between them.

  Conversely, Bubbie finds elements of my mother’s personality nerve-wracking, like the fact that she’s always on the go, and looking for ways to change or improve herself. I have a little bit of both of them in me. I love to travel and hike alongside my mom, and I like that she often pushes me. I also love sitting with my grandmother, eating her poppy-seed pastries while playing Chinese checkers, watching TV, or talking about what’s wrong with the government. None of which my mom could sit through for ten minutes.

  I don’t know why I should be surprised at how interested Mia is in something that seems insignificant to me. What daughter doesn’t love learning just about anything about her mother’s past? For many of us, it’s a curiosity that’s never sated.

  Some mothers are happy to share, and some don’t like talking about their youth, for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, a woman has the right to keep her past private, even from her kids. On the other, as her kid, you feel territorial, as if it’s your right to know.

  My sisters and I were always dying to know about my mom’s life in “the Old Country,” but she wasn’t often forthcoming about her past. Like many Europeans, she’s not in the American habit of going on about herself. Part of it is no doubt also because her past was such a painful one. So few in her family survived the Holocaust, a few cousins. Asking her about her childhood was like playing the lottery; you never knew when you’d hit the jackpot and get an answer, or more than one or two.

  We were greedy for any bit of history, an anecdote, a fact or memory. When one of us would find something out, we’d share it like a golden nugget. Photos were like hitting pay dirt, not that there were many. Over the years, we’ve fought over them like they were diamonds.

  Sometimes my mom would offer up something out of the blue. Several years ago, she was shopping with my youngest sister and pointed to a man’s blue-and-white pinstriped shirt and said her father used to wear those. Even something like that is dear to us, it fills in blanks, helps us complete the image of the man in the sepia photo with the aquiline nose, gaunt Lincoln-esque cheeks, and big, haunted-looking pale eyes. Our grandfather.

  He was smart, and usually won at cards, which he played more often than his wife liked. He was often gone, taking work as a carpenter and had the long beard typical of Eastern European Jewish men, though they weren’t what you’d call committed orthodox. My grandmother wore a bob and a short flapper dress when they married. We have one photo of her as a three-year-old, standing on a stool in a photo studio, holding my great-grandmother’s hand. We would have given anything to see a photo of her grown up. Close to six feet tall, with black hair and violet eyes, she was such a great beauty that people would come from other villages to watch her walk from the synagogue.

  She died at thirty-two, it’s believed of kidney failure, before the Nazis got to their small town in Czechoslovakia. It was a comfort to me that the school I sent Mia to for healing and safety halfway round the world just happened to be a day’s drive from my mother’s village. I mean, what are the odds? It was as if the spirit of the women in my family there wanted to watch over her.

  I know what it is to long to know more about your mother, and her mother before her. I never wanted my daughter to feel that way about me. And yet she does feel this way. She says I’ve brushed her off, but I don’t remember not answering questions or being evasive. It’s possible all daughters feel this way to a degree. Or maybe I’m projecting, or repeating, my own experience. One that I paid a dear price to learn is not uncommon.

  It was a blog post on that subject that created the break between my mother and me. I wrote that I was going to Budapest to see the places my mother lived or hid in, as a way to connect emotionally to her. Growing up, my mother wasn’t as demonstrative as my friends’ American mothers were, she didn’t say “I love you” and hug me all the time the way I saw them do. “She loved me, took excellent care of us, she was dutiful but emotionally unavailable,” was what I wrote, in the therapeutic jargon that’s become part of boomers’ vernacular. Like babies in a nursery, when one cries, they all chime in. Encouraged by Alice Miller, Freud, Philip Roth, Woody Allen, and so on, “emotionally unavailable mother” became the collective battle cry of millions of baby boomers looking to blame someone for their unhappiness, warranted or not.

  Of course I see now what I didn’t then—that my mother’s background made her doubly unable to do that; she was not only of a generation that valued more hands-off mothering, she was from a culture with fundamentally different values and approaches to parenting.

  What I saw as expressing how much I loved my mother, as evidenced by my traveling so far to feel closer to her, she saw as a critique of her as a mother. Which is, of course, understandable. I was so focused on expressing myself, I hadn’t considered how she might take what I wrote, how it could be misread. If I’m fully accountable, I did wish she had been more physically demonstrative. So what? Who says it’s a daughter’s job to insist a mother be exactly the way she wants her to be? Who gets to decide? I’m sure she wishes I’d been or done things differently. And now that I’ve cleaned house for a family of three, I’d say you can’t get much more physically demonstrative than cleaning house for a family of seven.

  For immigrant mothers, it’s even harder. The very things that Americans see as good mothering in the last forty years—lots of attention, praise, and self-esteem boosting, constant verbal validation—is what moms from Eastern Europe see as raising kids who will be insecure and self-absorbed. Self-esteem isn’t externally generated in my mother’s world, you earn it internally, by your own actions. I can’t say that our way has been better, to be honest.

  It’s disturbing to me that I may have missed signals from Mia, or dismissed her desire to know me better. I know she can ask obliquely sometimes when it comes to something she feels I may be sensitive to, but if I’d been truly listening to her, I would have heard her yearning.

  I know I’m not listening to Mia as deeply as I used to, at least if I want to strengthen our relationship.
I was so pleased that she shared with me why she left New York, and I listened closely. I was also aware of when to be quiet, to allow her to express herself without my input. But looking back I can see that as she was talking, part of my mind was working out how best to respond. I told her why I thought she felt that way rather than let her continue to explore it on her own. I answered instead of asked. What else might I have learned in listening and questioning for her experience, and more important, what else might she have learned?

  Listening was an important factor in bringing us back together and keeping us close when she first came home. In the year before she went off to college, our ability to hear each other was critical—apart from the past, apart from doubt, filters, fear, hurt, anger, worldview, expectation, all things inevitably bound up in all mother-daughter relationships. It’s a skill and an art, one that requires genuine commitment and a lot of practice.

  I learned active listening from Barbara Fagan, a master coach who facilitated a leadership workshop in which I took a vow of silence several years ago. As part of it, we were to take on our biggest challenge. Mine was authenticity, doing whatever it took to get my head connected with my heart. I knew there was no way I’d ever deeply connect with Mia until I did. So, while my peers were jumping out of airplanes, losing fifty pounds, or starting businesses, I took a vow of silence. Not in some monastery or quiet retreat center, in my own home during a regular work-week. None of my other ideas scared me as much as that did, always a good sign in the personal development arena if you ask me.