MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

I can remember when I started groaning “Oh, no. I’m turning into my mother.” I think one of the first times was when I told my kids “no humming at the dinner table,” and one asked “why not?” and I had no good answer. Certainly it was better than fighting across the table. But the no-humming rule came straight out and unedited from my mother’s mouth. Maybe she got it from her mother.

And on it goes. You keep running into your mother. You catch your reflection in a window and it's your mother. You worry about the toaster catching on fire and it's your mother. The silliest things. And one cold night you feel the need to go to the kitchen door, take a gulp of freezing air and look at the stars. Wasn't she always doing that?

Women of my generation took great pride in being different from our mothers. We were better educated, had fuller careers, broke glass ceilings, ran for office. And got married and had families and became exhausted Superwomen.

And then our daughters grew into women to have careers and babies and tweak the program to do things different from us.

But sometimes you hear them groan, too, that they are turning into us. For example, one of my daughters blames me for her compulsive list-making.

On this week’s Juicy Tomatoes radio show (www.juicytomatoes.com) I talked to five women about mothers and daughters. The relationship is full of drama and difficulties but if we're lucky it mellows, even ripes as it ages.

It’s a nice thing to think about, the link from mother to daughter and so on, when you’re out looking at the stars.
Susan