‘We know we are lucky,’ Róisín said. ‘If we didn’t before, we know it now.’
Eventually, the talk turned away from our mothers – to work and family and, for Maeve, baby names. The evening was still light when we kissed and hugged goodbye. There were promises to meet up for glasses of wine in a venue that wasn’t my house where our mothers would not be mentioned. And that was it. The door closed. Those nights had been some of the most entertaining evenings I’d had for a long time, something that came as a surprise to Róisín and to me. The list of ‘things’ we ticked off back in January might have been a bit pie in the sky, but in all cases it seemed as though meeting as a group had raised the consciousness of each daughter, forcing us to approach our mothers in a new way.
Last January, I thought I knew that the mother–daughter relationship was complex. Six months later I feel almost overwhelmed by its complexities. And the meetings have confirmed something else I had long suspected: mothers get a very raw deal. In spite of all the other mother clichés, I now believe at least one is true: it really is the hardest job in the world.
In the end, The Daughterhood meetings and their outcome were like most things in life – a mixed success. We were trying to do our best. Our best with our mothers. As we found out, meeting after meeting, when it comes to our mothers our best never felt quite good enough. But what if we were to decide that it was?
As I write, I’m waiting for a new batch of daughters. The next group of women on a mission to stand at their mothers’ gravesides with no regrets. Or to minimise those regrets. I imagine there will always be daughters sitting around talking about their mothers. My wish for them, for us, is that they will do that talking with more understanding, insight and intention. That they will do it with other daughters who can share their wisdom and their very different daughter experiences. My wish is that they will laugh and cry and love and appreciate their mothers for the women they were and are. That if they can’t love them, my wish is that they will forgive them at the very least; unless, like Anna, they don’t feel they need to forgive.
I’m looking forward to spending the time I have left with my own mother. I know it is limited. I have come to accept that; the shock has worn off. I’ve spent the last few months fobbing my mother off quite a bit. ‘I can’t talk to you now, a Mhamaí, I’m writing.’ ‘I can’t talk to you now, a Mhamaí, I’ve a Daughterhood meeting.’ Imagine. I can’t talk to you, I’m too busy thinking about other mothers, other daughters. Enough. I feel a certain sadness as I close the door on the first Daughterhood group and as I wait for the next one to come together. In the meantime, there is only one thing I want to do – I call my mother.
EPILOGUE
ANN INGLE, RÓISÍN’S MOTHER
This year my children gave me a holiday to Italy for my seventy-fifth birthday. When I told the good news to friends and family they unanimously responded with the mantra ‘You deserve it.’ I suppose I agreed with them until I began to read The Daughterhood.
I deserve it? Yes, of course. Wasn’t I widowed at forty and left with eight children to bring up alone? Didn’t I rear them, feed them, clothe them, make sure they did their homework and nurtured their talents as much as I could? That’s what people mean when they say, ‘You deserve it.’
But was it good enough?
I remembered saying goodbye to one of them at the door as they started off from Dublin to a new life in Glasgow. Just a hug and a goodbye and I let her away. She didn’t know that I went back into the house and cried, and I didn’t know that she felt abandoned.
I remember the time I sent one of them off on their bicycle to the hospital for treatment for a foot injury – ‘You’ll be fine, just ride slowly.’
And the time I made one daughter cry two days after having a home birth by insisting she didn’t call her child Síofra Sorcha Tomásach Aingil (I loved the Síofra Sorcha, even though I find Sorcha a little difficult to pronounce, but the rest . . .). It had to be done, the midwife was to register the birth that day and I thought it for the best. But those tears, that resentment . . . I feel terrible when I think of it now.
The daughter who lost her job at the same time as her husband and when they came home from Donegal I made them chicken pie but gave no sympathy, advice or consolation.
I sold the family home never thinking of the trauma it might cause the last child left adrift.
I could tell you more about the bad decisions I’ve made over the years, bad mistakes which could have been disastrous. I’m human just like these daughters and their mothers. I always tried to do my best and I have to forgive myself and hope that my daughters will forgive me in return.
Reading the stories of the mothers and daughters in this book was an interesting and rewarding experience. But it saddens me that we expect mothers to be models of excellence and daughters to be compliant and loving.
There are daughters who abandon their mothers without a thought. They justify their actions in whatever way they can. I wasn’t even there at the ‘mother of all funerals’. I left her for Ireland and a new life when I was twenty-one and our relationship thereafter consisted of fleeting visits, telephone calls and very few letters. I don’t think I missed her too much but I never thought about her feelings. I wish now I had thought more about our relationship and that I might have had the benefit of a book like The Daughterhood before it was too late.
The daughters in these pages are courageous. Having responded to Róisín and Natasha they have shown that they care and want to make things better despite everything.
I have four daughters but the truth is my relationship with each of them is unique. I am a different mother to each of them because they are individuals with their own distinctive personalities.
I always say my eldest was brought up by Dr Spock because he was my only point of reference at the time. If I had to give her a label it would be the ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Just as Well’ Daughter. We have a great relationship on equal terms, I like to think, although who makes the best marmalade is still a point of contention. Academically and in many other ways she has surpassed me. I remember very well the first time she found out I wasn’t perfect. The teacher in school had for some reason used the word ‘disremember’. ‘There’s no such word,’ I told her emphatically and of course an enquiry took place and it was found that there was. In fairness to me, it was a word that the Americans had made up but it was acceptable apparently. It was downhill from then and I was no longer ‘she who knows everything’.
There is an Independent Daughter among them. They are all that way because that was what I was aiming for but she is more than most. She doesn’t really need me for anything much and that’s OK, too. I know she loves me because, as they say, actions, earrings and foreign holidays speak louder than words.
Then there is Róisín but she’s told you everything, hasn’t she? Not quite. She takes me to special events because of her work and I feel privileged. We argue quite a lot, heatedly sometimes, but then we make it up as quickly. She thinks I treat her differently and says things like ‘You wouldn’t say that to the others’ and she’s probably right. Recently after a few days away with her and her family she sent me a text: ‘Being with you makes every occasion better.’ Yesterday she telephoned to check that I was all right after my eye injection. How did she remember that? I think this book is helping both of us.
I live with my youngest daughter and her husband Killian and that is just right for me. Katie was what other people might have called a clingy child. I never saw it that way. I liked her wanting me around all the time. Now she is married with children of her own and we have made a home together.
I have four daughters (and four wonderful sons) with whom I am well pleased but should I expect or ask for more? Natasha says, ‘It’s about doings things with and for our mothers . . . It’s about bringing them pleasure and at the same time making life pleasurable for ourselves . . .’
Natasha’s idea of discussing death and funeral arrangeme
nts is something that I will attend to. Funerals are for the living and, whilst I have strong views about cremation and inexpensive coffins, I must ask my children how they would like my burial service to be conducted.
I have said I expect nothing from my daughters. They didn’t ask to be born, as I was reminded by them in their teenage years when things didn’t go their way. But if I’m pushed there are a few things I might wish for from them.
I would like to be accepted just as I am with all my faults and foibles. My daughters laugh at me sometimes and I don’t mind, well, not too much.
What else do I want? Respect for me and my views. I love it when my opinion is asked for, even though most of the time it isn’t acted upon (unless it coincides with theirs). I do wish they would wait for me to finish speaking because, if they don’t, inevitably I will forget the wondrous words I was about to utter.
I love being alone with my daughters individually but that doesn’t happen too often because of the grandchildren and their busy lives. Recently one daughter and I spent a whole day together at a series of talks at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. It was very special for me as we were able to talk about the topics raised and she introduced me to her colleagues. Róisín has already mentioned the day she interviewed me in a restaurant, just the two of us. We were more like two giggling friends than mother and daughter.
I love to laugh with them. One daughter and I were mistaken for Spanish women in a museum in Madrid once. The curator was telling us in Spanish an amusing story about one of the paintings. We knew it was amusing because he was chuckling all the way through but we never understood a word. We laughed so much that day that even remembering it brings tears to our eyes. Róisín has already told you about the nightdress and how we lay on our backs on the floor, our sides aching, like characters from Peppa Pig.
I love when they think of what I might need when I don’t even know it myself. One daughter on a very tight budget walked into my bedroom one day with a television she had bought in Tesco and set it up for me as a surprise.
I’m grateful for their love and understanding and fervently hope that I will never be a burden to them. I trust if I am, they will be able to hide it from me. They all have a theatrical flair so it shouldn’t be too difficult. I can only take so much honesty.
I came across The Four Agreements by Miguel Don Ruiz some years ago and gave a copy to each of my daughters and we often quote it back to one another. One of the agreements reads:
Always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse and regret.
There are times in our lives when we are not able to muster the strength, patience and understanding that is required of us. We are only human. All we can do is our best and as we learn more we will become better daughters and mothers. Sometimes our best may not be good enough, other times it will be stupendous. I am thankful for the love and companionship of my daughters. Their best has been and always will be good enough for me.
MARY TROY, NATASHA’S MOTHER
When Natasha asked me to write about ‘motherhood’ I found that the word did not sit easily with me. ‘Daughterhood’ I had become used to as she and I had had many discussions about her book, but neither were words that would have been part of my normal vocabulary. I realised that it was not a term that I and my friends, also mothers, ever used. Yes, we talked about our children but rarely about ourselves as mothers. With very close friends I might express some of the guilt I feel about times when I failed as a parent. But most of our talk centres on our children, usually attributing their good points and strengths to them and their faults to ourselves.
‘If only’ is a phrase commonly used: if only I had listened more; if only I had been more there for them; if only I had praised them more. The list of ‘if onlys’ may differ but one thing we are all agreed on is that being a mother presents an ongoing challenge that lasts a lifetime. Reading the stories of the daughters brought back memories of my own relationship with my mother. I could empathise with their guilt, their impatience to the point of anger at times, and their inability to communicate meaningfully. Most moving are the accounts of loving her but not being able to show it and not being sure that their mother loves them; all emotions I went through with my own mother.
As contraceptives were not easily available at the time, I remember saying to my future husband that if we were going to get married then we were probably going to have a baby. He was rather taken aback and, even though I had no great feeling about babies, never having had anything to do with them, somehow I knew that having one would change my life forever. And it did. I was a student at the time, attending two universities. And, sure enough, after two months of marriage, I discovered I was pregnant. My feelings on hearing the news were a mixture of shock and delight but, honestly, I was more concerned with finishing my degrees. Exams finished in October and the baby was due in November so I had just six weeks to look forward to the birth of my first child. I can still see myself on the bus in a duffel coat going to the hospital both excited and apprehensive. Two days of labour and a C section later, I was presented with my son Oisín, 9 lbs 10 ounces. As I held him in my arms and he looked at me with his piercing blue eyes, I was filled with very mixed emotions. My heart filled with a love that brought tears to my eyes; it was as if his ten little fingers wrapped themselves around my heart never to let go and yet and yet . . . he was a being separate from me, his own person.
As the months went by, the feeling that Oisín did not ‘belong’ to me grew stronger and, when I mentioned this to friends, they told me that I had no maternal instinct. So for months I suffered all sorts of fears and anxieties about my ability to be a ‘good’ mother. Did I lack the right maternal feelings and instincts to guide me on this unchartered journey (sorry Natasha) of motherhood? Then my sister, Margaret, gave me a present – The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran – and there I found the answer to all my worries, fears and apprehensions.
In his section on your children he opens with: ‘Your children are not your children . . . And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.’ We may give them our love and try to be like them, but must never try to make them like us. He goes on to compare them to arrows let fly to go where no parent can go as they belong to the future. It’s our job to be the best archer we can so that the children we send forth are the best that they can be. On reading this gone was all the guilt and I felt confirmed as a natural mother.
And it was the same when Cilian, Natasha, Sorcha and Kate were born. I realised they, too, were given into my care to nurture and love as individuals and not mine to possess or own.
When Natasha was born I knew very early on that something wasn’t right. And my maternal instinct was correct. As she mentioned, there were many visits to doctors and I agonised as to how I would cope with a potentially blind and brain-damaged child. Luckily, Natasha has overcome her visual impairment so well that, meeting her today, you would never suspect she is legally blind, as she goes about her work as any full-sighted person.
I have vivid memories of the time the children got chicken pox or measles in their teens and I rushed home from work to give them hot lemon and pineapple juice with honey and I felt their pain as if it were my own. And, as with all their illnesses, I suffered with them and would have taken on all their pain myself if I could. I became very defensive and when they were bullied or badly treated, I found myself immediately jumping to their defence. Indeed, there were instances when I felt such a rage that at times I felt I would have killed for them.
Each of my children has a strong character and expresses themselves accordingly. During their teenage years this led to raised voices and rows, so that I had to ask some not to come home for dinner and handed out £1, which I could ill afford, to pay for them to eat out. I did try to support them in whatever path they wanted to follow, though, and honestly did not try
to impose any expectations of my own.
As the years went by, there were failures and successes, triumphs and disappointments as each pursued their chosen paths. Bumps along the way included one failing exams in college (though with some study he would have passed no problem); having to drive to Derry from Galway to bring back a daughter to re-sit her maths in the leaving cert; and a manic weekend trying to bring back a daughter from France in time to re-apply for college. The list could go on. There were also sad, sad days, for example as my two sons, in spite of excellent qualifications, left to go to England for work. There was a time when all five were out of the country and I was alone here. As there was no Skype, phone bills were enormous but phone I did because it was important to me to know how they were.
When I was growing up we never had friends in to play and I wanted my house to be one where all the children could bring theirs. And they did, in droves! My own relationship with my mother had been strained but with her grandchildren it was quite different. She showed them affection, chatted to them and was very supportive in all that they were involved with: paying for courses, giving them gifts and listening to them. They were very good to her, too, going in to see her, doing messages and reading to her as her sight deteriorated. She enriched their lives and is remembered with love by them all, especially by the youngest, Kate, who was particularly close to her.
And how are things today, you might ask? My health complications have meant that my children have had to look out for me, particularly in the last six years. One does all the practical things around the house, gets the big shopping and organises my pills (quite a task). With one I have discussions on political and philosophical topics; with another discussions about being a mother; and with another on how best to bring up a child as a single parent. Natasha has written about how they got together to build the en suite in Sorcha’s house, but what she didn’t say was how overwhelmed I was by it. I had tears of joy and gratitude streaming down my face. For this was not an act of duty to a parent. No, this was an act of love for me, their mother – as was the trip to the Arctic with Natasha and Sorcha, which I will never forget. I treasure the laughs and fun we have when together, especially the evenings spent eating in the garden when laughter can get so raucous I worry the neighbours might complain! We are great party givers and love nothing better than a reason to celebrate: birthdays, anniversaries, successes – any excuse and we party, something I really appreciate about us all.
The Daughterhood Page 25