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May 21, 2006

Understanding mums and daughters
By Deborah Tannen
WASHINGTON

WHEN my mother was 92, and it was clear that her end was nearing, one of my sisters asked if I felt I had settled emotional accounts with her.

'Yes,' I said. 'I think the love and attention I've showered on her these last 10 years have made up for the suffering I caused her when I was younger.'

My sister asked: 'What about the suffering she caused you?'

This caught me off guard. I'd forgotten all that. My relationship with my mother had been more tumultuous than my two sisters'.

As the youngest, I did more to defy and frighten her: In high school I dressed in my father's shirts. I ran barefoot around Greenwich Village and stayed out late. (We were just listening to folk music in cafes, but she thought we were having sex.)

The distress I caused her didn't end when I outgrew my teens. It increased, because I was unmarried for many of my adult years.

My sisters married at 19 and 20; I didn't follow suit until I was 23. My sisters and I divorced at about the same time (her worst nightmare come true), but they found new partners before long, while it was 11 years before I found mine.

That, together with the three years between college and my first marriage, gave my mother 14 years of sleepless nights - and me 14 years of arguments.

It wasn't that I never felt unhappy about being single. But my mother's concern made things worse. Once, after she and my father visited me in Washington, I walked them to their car and waved as it receded down the street. When they got home, she called to tell me not that she'd enjoyed the visit, but that it broke her heart to see me standing alone as they drove away.

I, too, had had a fleeting sense of sadness but that wasn't the only feeling I had. I loved my house; I loved everything about the life I led as a professor. My mother's remark implied marriage trumped all. It seemed to dismiss everything I'd accomplished, reframing my life as pitiable.

By a strange alchemy, my small sadness became her big misery, which became my anguish and then my anger. Many daughters, not wanting to worry their mothers, refrain from telling them about problems. It's a natural reaction, but one that can cause mothers another kind of grief.

Many women assume being close means talking about what's going on in their lives, including personal problems. So a mother who learns her daughter was going through a tough time and hasn't told her may feel hurt.

Both comfort and conflict result from a mother's desire to see all go well for her daughter, and a daughter's desire to feel that her mother approves of her life.

Figuring this out helped me understand my mother, and understanding softened my resentment.

I always found it creepy she wanted my company so badly, wanted to know my secrets. I recall thinking: 'She treats me more like a lover than a daughter!'

But during those last years, I began treating her like a lover: I sent her flowers, gifts and affectionate notes, and I helped with her physical care.

The waves of love these gestures engendered made me understand the relationship between mother and daughter entails a level of passion that has much in common with romantic love.

One night, helping my mother get ready for bed, I prepared the container of water in which she placed her teeth, then handed her a warm wet washcloth as I'd done many times before.

But this time, she didn't hand back the cloth quickly after wiping her face. Instead, she held it to her eyes, and I realised she was crying. 'A daughter shouldn't see her mother like this,' she said.

But I said, and I meant it, 'I've seen you without teeth many times; it makes me feel closer to you that you trust me that much.'

I'm grateful that my mother lived long enough to give us that moment. And I'm grateful that Mother's Day doesn't only remind me she's gone; it also brings her back. -- New York Times

Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is the author, most recently, of You're Wearing That? Understanding Mothers And Daughters In Conversation.