The Better Mother

My mom once told me that I’m a better mother than her, and after thinking on it for a while, I agree.

Before anyone freaks out, let me explain.

My relationship with my mother is anything but black and white. Is anyones?

We both come from a long line of women who wanted more out of life. Sometimes we just couldn’t ever seem to find it, or, more often than not, afford it if we did. When we realized that we couldn’t have what we wanted, we tried to make sure our daughters did, or at least that our daughters made it closer to having what they wanted than we did.

See, the meaning of motherhood and all that other gobbledygook doesn’t really start to clear up until you actually are a mother, and you learn all these unsaid truths.

This shit is hard. NO ONE knows what they’re doing, and the only “book” we have is the experiences of our own childhoods, good and bad.

I’m not going to lie, or paint some pretty fake picture. My mom isn’t a super hero, or some earthbound angel.

She’s actually pretty terrifying.

When we were kids, my sisters and I called her Maleficent. Not only because her high set cheekbones and dark eyes resemble the dragon witch, but when she is angry her voice is that of a wrathful god.

When she became a school bus driver the other kids, who had no idea she was my mother, said, to me, they were pretty sure she was an actual witch.

(For the record her glare puts 95% of resting bitch faces to shame. I know most women feel like they have the winning RBF but I promise that hers will scare yours back into the closet.)

I always agreed with the other kids, they were right to be afraid, she was most definitely a witch.

I look like my father as a girl. I have dull copper hair that frizzes and curls and has taken me 30 years to figure out how to semi properly care for. My face freckles but I lucked into a peaches and cream complexion instead of my fathers ivory.

My mom, on the other hand, looks like a curly haired Pocahontas. The only thing we share is dark brown eyes and equal amounts of frizz. It wasn’t easy for people to know upon looking that I was her daughter.

I always thought that the reason we seemed to fight so much was because I was too much like my father and she didn’t see much of herself in me. They divorced when I was around 13 years old and I remember thinking that maybe she was mad at me because I was a walking, talking, constant reminder.

When I became a mother I realized there was a lot more to it.

My mom had me before she found herself. Before she knew who she was and what she wanted out of life.

I know this now because I had my own children before I found myself.

I had no idea who I was when I had kids. I know, that like most 19 year olds (yes 19), I thought I did. But I didn’t. I thought I wanted to just have a good family. A family that was better than my own family. I was not going to make my parents mistakes.

When you grow up and become a parent and you have to do the job of parenting, you realize that your parents just did the best they could. Every parent is more than just a parent, they’re still a person. They have thoughts and feelings and desires outside of being mom or dad, but when you’re a kid, and everything is black and white, it’s almost impossible to imagine them as anything but.

Being a mom, reflecting on my own mom, means that I understand that sometimes my mom just wanted to be Lisa: the artist, the reader, the woman and not “mom.”

Being a parent and going through all the ups and downs means realizing, people make mistakes. A lot of them. People also change as much as the world around them changes, we have to. We’d die if we didn’t. Everyone needs the time and space to change and grow and learn from our mistakes.

My mom was a first born daughter of a first born daughter of a first born daughter. As her first, it seemed to be my inheritance to have a plethora of mental health issues and an unnecessary sense of responsibility towards everyone and everything. I know though, that I am not the first eldest daughter to feel the weight of their foremothers responsibilities and struggles slowly dumped onto their shoulders.

I won’t be the last either, but maybe I can lessen my own daughters load, as my mother tried to do for me.

Crazy runs deeps in my family but maybe I can teach my kids how to better wade through it. I at least understand, with a big thanks to my mother, that mental health is important and nothing to be ashamed of.

As an adult, I see more of my mother in me than I did as a teenager. I might have my dads face but I have my mothers love of art. I’ll never be able to draw like she can but I love photography and writing.

My sisters and I have our fathers temper but our mothers open mind.

Truthfully, my mother is wilder than me. She’s always seemed to want more out of life than me. She has a presence that is noticeable in every room. I envy her fearlessness as much as her black hair.

There were times growing up when I think her idea on parenting was a lot more authoritarian than necessary, more than I use in my own parenting style, but I know that it was how she was raised.

You didn’t question your parents, and parents were never wrong. However, I think that deep down she’s proud to have raised three girls who stand up for their beliefs even if that meant we stood up to her more than a few times growing up. (*Yes she always won in the end)

I’m sure that there are things that she completely disagreed with her mother on. In fact, I know that there are because those are the things that she swore to never do to us. One of those things is that while the woman is fearsome we, her daughters, have never been afraid to call on her.

Whenever I gave birth, or any time I’ve been in an emergency situation, I realized pretty quickly that I wanted my mom.

Maleficent comes in handy when you need answers or you need people to get moving on something.

(*Say something mean to me, really, I dare you. I would not put it past the woman to use an ass kicking as an excuse to travel long distances.)

I often wonder if my mom would have kids, knowing what she knows now, if she got to have another go around on this ride called life. A life totally separate/after this one. How many women actually would?

I think after a lifetime of being a good responsible mother all women should be given a life of absolute freedom to find and be the person they most want to be.

I’m a better mother than my mother BECAUSE of my mother. She was better than her mother, and hers was better than hers and so on.

My daughter, should she decide to be a mother, will be better than me.

I WANT her to be.

I want her to learn from the mistakes I made. I want her to look at me and think that at least I kept trying. At least I kept going. I kept getting up to be her mother whether it was great that day or not. And if I failed, which I have, I still got up to do it again the next day.

I also admitted when I was wrong, apologized, and tried to do better.

My mom didn’t do everything right. Not by a long shot. But she gave me what I needed to do better, and the knowledge and strength to do it.

In the end that’s what matters. That’s what being a better mother really means.