Letters from My Mother .
Annie Marhe a
My daughter is two , and I think she needs a break from me , that she ’ s had too much of Mommy . I do my best to mix things up , creating new little worlds for the two of us to explore each day , in blanket forts , in magical block towers that house her favorite Disney characters , in our dress-up costumes . Sure , she gets bored sometimes , as any toddler does — but it ’ s bigger than that . I worry that if her entire world is me — is that enough for her ?
I have been home with her since she was born , leaving my career behind to be a stay-at-home mama . And then a week a er her first birthday , just when we were starting to fill up our schedule with Mommy & Me music classes , play dates , and trips to the zoo , the pandemic forced us into isolation . Since then it has truly just been Mommy & Me . Now she is two , the world is reopening , and I have started to feel like I am holding her back . Months ago , I put her on a wait list for the preschool we chose for her , but now a spot has opened up and I can ’ t bring myself to complete the enrollment forms . She needs me , I think . I need her . I can ’ t quite let go .
At night , it is this thought that swirls around in my head until I succumb to the exhaustion of the day : Am I doing this motherhood thing right ? Have I made the right choices for my daughter ? Would my mother be proud ?
When my mother was alive , all I could think of when it came to motherhood were the things I wanted to do differently than her , the distance I needed to create between my mother as Mom and me as Mom . I wanted — needed — to be a better version of Mom . I ' m not saying I thought she was a bad mom ; on the contrary — I idolized her . But doesn ' t every daughter imagine the ways she will be different than , better than , the one who came before her ?
And then when she died , I suddenly needed to be exactly like her . She had been a stay-at-home mother , one of those women who had always known she was meant to be a mother . She had reminded me o en of the things she gave up for motherhood — she had never traveled , never gone to college , never had the opportunity to work her way up a corporate career ladder . So I spent my twenties postponing motherhood , and doing all of those things instead — college and then grad school , traveling all over Europe , building my HR career . And then she was gone , and I knew motherhood was her unrealized dream for me , and that I had failed her .
I became obsessed with understanding her , grilling my dad about the time they first met , their first date , what her pregnancies were like . But to really know her , all I had to do was read her writing . And I did — some of it . It was a lot that she had le behind : handwritten journals dating