relationships
my mother is my best friend WE’VE COME A LONG WAY BABY! WO R D S B Y NA I MA K A R P
Mother–daughter relationships are forces of nature and can be among the most powerful bonds that exist in this world. They’re simultaneously filled with beauty, frustration, destructiveness, and rebirth. A mother’s place in society has always been to doubt herself—from pregnancy to postpartum. So, when we embark on the journey of motherhood, it’s filled with self-scrutiny instead of celebration of baby steps and major accomplishments alike. We need to start giving mothers more confidence instead of dismissing them or pitting them against each other until they can’t see their own worth. When I look at my own mother, I ruminate on our relationship and the many complicated journeys it has undergone over the years. I’m grateful for every one of them. Today, I proudly call her my best friend. She’s a startling reflection of myself and the first person I call when things are going south. Mothers see themselves in their daughters, and I find that our similarities, not our differences, were often the reason we would butt heads when I was younger. My mother had me at the age of 40 in December 1991. A few days later, with me wrapped in her arms, we stayed awake hours past my dad and brother, watching the Times Square ball descend as 1992 arrived. My brother was born prematurely six years before me. My mom had tough pregnancies with both of us but remembers being particularly insecure over her lack of experience with my brother. Her first time getting pregnant was a breeze, but it wasn’t as easy when it came to me a few years later. After she found out I was a girl, everything changed for her, as she says, “not because of my age—but because I knew that this was when I had to step up and be to my daughter the mother I wanted to have.” My mother is too kind to me when it comes to our rollercoaster of an emotional evolution, saying that from her end, there were “so many highs and few lows.” We both value the lessons learned from the difficult times, and she remembers trying to make it through those moments with superhuman strength, “like mothers who lift cars off
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their babies.” She was never the mom to leave me crying with modern self-soothing tactics. She swaddled me in love and support from every birthday to my graduation. Some would call it coddling, but I feel lucky to have someone with her warmth and light in my corner. I may have received the purest concentration of her love, but she always treated those around her with equal support and empathy. My mom was a teacher at the same school I attended, and while this was sometimes an overwhelming embarrassment at the time, I look back with such pride at the role she took on with her students. Though strict at times and not afraid to call kids out, she created a safe space that left a legacy of compassion around her name and reputation. I remember often waiting outside her classroom after school as she had a heart-to-heart with a student that needed to get something off their chest, academic or personal. I went to a private school with kids whose parents had a much higher income bracket than ours. Think pretentious middle schoolers in designer outfits chauffeured to school in limos. It wasn’t my scene, and I acted out by spending time with older kids in my neighborhood who often skipped out on school, drank, and smoked. I fibbed when she had suspicions, which created an environment of mistrust and bad energy. I could tell she was acting out of fear, helplessness, and protectiveness, which she confirmed years later in our adult relationship. As an older mother, she went through menopause when I was still rather young and went through all the ups and downs of the hormonal insecurity and paranoia. Our house was a constant freezer due to her hot flashes. With such a gap in our age, I could barely grasp what menopause was, and I found myself irritated with this erratic behavior coming from a generally logical person. Due to the late onset of her menopause, she produced an excess of estrogen, which led to breast cancer. Luckily, with some experimental medication, she found herself in remission and never had to do chemotherapy.
