(The Meat and Potatoes of Life)
With my hair a rat’s nest and still in my pajamas, I tapped on my daughter Anna’s bedroom door. She was home for a whole week from New York City. My younger daughter, Lilly, a nursing student, had also just stopped by after her night shift at the hospital to see her big sister.
Slowly opening the door, I delighted at the scene that ranked in my top favorites as a mom: My daughters cozied up on one bed, chatting, gossiping and laughing. With an exaggerated tiptoeing movement that communicated, “Don’t mind me!”, I made my way to the other side of the already crowded bed and crawled in.
Anna and Lilly, 26 and 24 respectively, told stories of single young adulthood that were exciting, dramatic and hilarious. As a very tired 58-year-old mother, I relished the increasingly rare moments when both daughters were home and I could be a part of their lives. I sat back and took it all in.
For a moment, my attention was diverted, when our yellow Lab nibbled my sock. “Ouch! Gilligan, stop!” Looking back toward Anna and Lilly, I noticed them whispering.
“What are you whispering about?” I whined in a juvenile tone.
“Nothing,” Lilly smirked at Anna.
“You guys, that’s not fair. You say that you tell me everything, but you really don’t,” I pouted.
“We tell you too much, Mom,” Lilly blurted. “It’s not healthy!”
“Anna,” I pleaded a few minutes later, “Will you please come to Boot Camp with me today?” She agreed, and I was happy again.
That afternoon, I entered the kitchen where Anna sat working at the table and exclaimed, “Hey Anna, I have all the ingredients to make Chex Mix!”
Ever since Anna was in college, I’d been making batches of homemade Chex Mix for her to share with her roommates and friends. Her best friend’s mom, a gorgeous bridal gown designer and talented baker, supplied their group of girls batches of her signature Reese’s Cup cookies, and I contributed homemade Chex Mix. The girls had always seemed tickled pink to receive our respective sweet and salty offerings, and even though my pedestrian snack wasn’t as decadent as the cookies, I was proud of my contribution to the girls’ fun nonetheless.
“I just need to get some pretzel sticks … do you want me to get gluten free?” I asked Anna while I inspected the pantry.
“Mom —” Anna hesitated a moment then said, “— I’m not really that into the Chex Mix.”
In an instant, scenes and thoughts flashed before my senses. The batch of Chex Mix I burned on Anna’s birthday. The other mom’s pristine home, perfect smile and blonde hair. My paunch. Tumbleweeds of dog hair blowing across my hardwood floors. My cluttered house.
My admittedly weak self-esteem quickly conjured up a yearslong conspiracy: Anna and her friends had never liked my Chex Mix but were afraid to tell me. They had only pretended, to make me feel included.
However, almost as quickly, an alternative theory came to me. “Maybe Anna is just being passive-aggressive?” I thought, but didn’t know why.
I hid away in another room, googling for answers, and found a Psychology Today article identifying seven roles mothers play in their daughters’ lives that might explain relationship tension. Voraciously reading the list of seven roles, two descriptions jumped out at me. “The Girlfriend,” the type of mom who wants to know everything and doesn’t respect boundaries. Yep. Bingo. And “The Fixer,” a well-meaning mom who wants to help too much, and can’t accept that her daughter wants to control her own life. Uh-huh, guilty.
Regardless of whether Anna was being passive-aggressive to throw up boundaries, I was 50% of our mother-daughter relationship and needed to take 50% of the responsibility. I realized that, in my excitement to have my daughters home during the holidays, I planned and expected too much, leaving no room for them to be independent adult women.
Like Chex Mix and cookies, mother-daughter relationships are a complex mix of ingredients. As life stages change, sometimes roles must be carefully adjusted. A little more of this, a little less of that, to strike the right salty and sweet balance.
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Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com
