wrong — that doing it all is not the picture of perfect parenting , that losing yourself as a sacrifice to your offspring is not of benefit to your children , or to you .
She tells of how she brought her daughter , me , home from the hospital , and was shunned by her firstborn child , my older brother , for weeks , because he was so angry at her for having le him . She wrote that she had not le him for more than an hour ’ s time for the fourteen months before that . “ I was the one person who was constantly with him since the day he was born ,” she wrote , and I know I could have written this same sentiment myself , of my relationship with my own daughter . She wrote of how she intended to be “ a mom who was always there ,” but how she realized she had “ carried it too far .” She wrote of how when she returned home a er leaving her son for the first time , “ it was like visiting a friend whose child was shy of me ,” that it crushed her soul .
I hold a corner of the paper between my thumb and forefinger as I read , rub it gently . It is so with age and almost translucent from wear , and I can feel her hands on it , her fingering it this same way before sending off a copy to Redbook . There she was trying to offer advice to other young mothers , back in 1986 . Could she ever have imagined her reader thirty five years later would be the very own daughter she was writing about ?
She ends the essay with her lessons learned ; her advice for her reader : “ I had given my child too much of myself . I remember thinking — there must be a way to balance time , feelings , and the needs of our entire family and still keep enough of myself for me . Being hurt like that made me realize that not only did I not have a separate life from my child , but he had not been allowed to have a separate life from me . We still believe it is important for me to be home with them . Now , we also know how important it is for me to be away from them once in a while too , for me , and for them .”
The irony of it all is that — if my mother were alive today , and she gave me this advice , I wouldn ’ t follow it . I might actually do the opposite of what she suggested , as stubborn daughters do . But she isn ’ t here ; her words are . So I can listen to her in this way ; I can follow her lead . And so perhaps these pages were not meant for the Redbook audience at all , but for me .
The way she felt in that moment is precisely how I feel in this one . I am imagining my mother sitting at her own desk and writing this as baby Annie napped , and here I am in a parallel world thirty-five years later , reading it for the first time at my desk as her granddaughter naps .
A er she passed , I hated when people would tell me : “ things happen for a reason , it ’ ll all make sense one day .” When I heard that , I always felt anger — that nothing would ever justify how we