The Fruits of Loss

In her book Motherless Daughters (which I haven't read in years, but I think I have this right), Hope Edelman concludes that women who grow up without mothers tend either to become somewhat fragile and dependent, always hungering for that steadying presence or, freed from the usual boundaries imposed by female socialization, to become fairly independent and resourceful. I like to think, of course, that I fit the latter category.

When my children were in the range of eight-to-ten and carpools had become a necessity of life, I once asked a good friend if she ever thought, as her kids rode off in the back seat of someone else's car, that she might never see them again. "Never," was her response. "I always do," I said. It's a hard thing, but not a bad thing, to be aware of the the moment. Mindfulness. Sometimes it emerges, unbidden, from the long and ever-presentness of absence.

My daughter commented once, only a few years ago, on how we always say "I love you" when we separate. A walk to the drugstore, a flight to the west coast. She knows, I think, that I want to be sure that she heard it, if something happens. I never told her that. I never wanted to impose the damage of loss on her. She carries it lightly, but she does, I think, carry it.

Last night, achy and tired and unable to swallow, I headed up for bed early in the evening. She came up and stretched out next to me and we talked for more than an hour, rehashing the problems one of her friends is facing. Eventually I drifted off, done in by pain and sleeping meds. But not before I remembered that my mother never, ever, got to stretch out on a bed and explore the issues of young adulthood with her daughter.

I am so very fortunate. Not just in the doing. But in the knowing.