Learning to wear mother clothes to cover women dreams

This is an excerpt from an article written by Diana L. Gustafson.  It is such a beautiful and accurate portrayal of how mothers and daughters silently communicated, or miscommunicate,  their gender roles that I wanted to share it with you. I think the essence of truth in Gustafson's  words is embedded in all our lives.

…" As the sun melted into the horizon, I listened as my mother asked and answered questions about her life. For 25 years I knew my mother had criss-crossed Canada as my father's job took him from one military base to another. Fifteen times, Mom had re-established our family in a new home with new paint, new friends, and new schools. And with each move she left her part-time job as a teacher hoping she would be able to find another.

How I had tried to be like her, the perfect wife. And in so many ways I was not. I was tired of having to compromise my dreams for my husband's success. I was tired of uprooting my children and having to deal with their tears and tantrums as we prepared again to leave the familiar. I had felt like a failure for wanting to leave my marriage. And how I had tried to be like her, the perfect mother. And in so many big and little ways I was not. She had raised five kids when two exhausted me. She had designed and tailored all our clothes and I was ashamed to admit that I didn't even own a needle and thread.

When it was my turn I asked Mom to talk about her greatest achievement. She said there were many things of which she was proud. One of those things was that she had raised a daughter who had the courage to do something she needed to do. Did she know I was planning to leave my marriage? A good mother didn't end a marriage just because she was unhappy, did she? Had I heard her correctly? Did she think that was a courageous act? For a moment I glimpsed the woman beneath the mother clothes.

As I was growing up I had nurtured the myth of my mother and grandmother as uncomplaining and selfsacrificing, blanketing everything with love and forgiveness. I did so without realizing that I was making them invisible to me as women. In trying to live up to that myth of mother, I reproduced for my daughter the same unachievable image of mother. And I did so without realizing that I was making my self invisible to her.

Since that hot summer day some things have changed but many things remain the same. The day we left the reunion, Grandma leaned into the car to hug and kiss me and my children goodbye--just one more time--just in case it was the last time. And it was. When I want to recall that moment, and that last touch, I touch my own cheek, or the face of my daughter and I feel her soft skin again. From time to time I imagine her making cookies or driving her red Mustang convertible.

My mother and I have tried, each in our own way, to make ourselves more visible to each other as women. I want to be a woman in my mother's eyes and I want to see her as the woman she is. Yet, my old ways of thinking and behaving are so resistant to my deep desire for those ways to be different. The urge to maintain the priority of the mother-daughter relationship over the woman-woman relationship is compelling. When I am in pain, I turn to my mother, not as a woman in search of solace, but as her daughter in need of a mother's embrace. And she responds to me with her mother love and I feel healed.

This year my daughter turns 23. She has heard pieces of this story before and she will read this account too. I'm hoping it will make me ever more visible to her as a woman who is also her mother. I expect it will also initiate another of our dialogues about woman dreams.

That summer and still today, I am learning to recognize old patterns in my life and in the history of mothering in my family. A pattern of accepting the rules as sacred and unchangeable ... of learning to make the unacceptable invisible. A pattern of questions asked but seldom answered ... of woman dreams kept hidden from view. A pattern of being a woman subsumed by motherhood ... a destination that was expected of us and a destination we expect of ourselves.

That summer and still today, I am also learning to create new patterns in my life and in the history of mothering in my family--for my sake and for that of my daughter."

Full text of article Learning to wear mother clothes to cover women dreams by Diana L. Gustafson, available in  Canadian Woman Studies 18.2-3 (Summer-Fall 1998): p105-8. (3306 words)

Diana L. Gustafson is a Ph.D. student in Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and in the Collaborative Program for Women's Studies at the University of Toronto. Her current research interest is health care reform and its impact on women and families in Canada.