Motherhood: a legacy of love

by Marion L. Dearing

 "When you grow up, I hope you have a little girl who talks to you just like you talk to me." Those portentous words were spoken to me by my mother after a particularly obstreperous retort from my teenage mouth. After a few predictable years of occasional sass and smart talk, I matured into a daughter with pretty respectable credentials, able to recognize my mother's gifts, taking delight in our love, friendship, and remarkable closeness.

Approximately twenty-eight years after my mother's "curse," my own daughter Lindsay rang my ears with a full-blown example of adolescent smart mouth. Furious with me about something instantly forgotten, she stormed off to bed after making sure I understood how keenly she looked forward to moving out for college in a few years. While resisting her verbal venom, I remembered Mother's words and wondered anew about her amazing talents. Had she in her maternal omnipotence somehow shaped this moment to make her point in a dramatic and memorable way?

Now that Lindsay has escaped the episodic and temporary insanity inherent in the teenage years, she has grown into a young woman with a solid core of goodness, free from shallow sentimentality. My recent birthday brought a card from her, on which she added the following note: "You are a great friend, Mom, and I don't know what I would do without you. I love you."

In many ways, I still don't know what to do without my mother, dead now for three years, taken by lung cancer while ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. When we learned several years before from a neurologist that her mental health was beginning to disintegrate, she and I each determined separate but connected courses of action. I would take charge of her well-being in whatever ways possible; and she, without explicit articulation but with an attitude of complete faith, turned herself over to my care. Just as I trusted her completely at the beginning of my life, so did she trust me near the end of hers. That rare form of limitless maternal love that she gave-and taught-to me is part of her irreplaceable legacy.

How wise was my mother? Wise enough to realize, even in her long-ago irritation, that her "curse" was also a blessing. Climbing out of those random pits of teenage angst, I quickly grew in the relationship with my mother from back-talk to respect and ready affection. My daughter has done the same.

If Lindsay chooses to have a child, I hope that she has a little girl who talks to her just like she talks to me. Both she and her little girl will be lucky indeed.

Marion L. Dearing, chair-elect of the Women's Center Advisory Board, has been executive assistant to President William M. Chase since June 1998. She misses her mother and father every day. 

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