Not Becoming My Mother (7 page)

“My mother is dead,” she wrote. “It’s time I stopped letting her tell me how to live. Why should I care what she thinks? I have so little time.”

She was slightly high, like a person just after the first electric sip of a martini, and she did exactly what she felt like doing. She had always wanted to serve people, and now she simply started helping those around her. She would never be a doctor, but she could care for sick friends, and she often had them stay with her for months on end. She made a kind of family of other people’s children and grandchildren, and they were constantly in and out of her house.

She took in student boarders too. She said it was to help pay the rent, but it was really because she liked having young people in the apartment. Her phone was always busy, her apartment always full of life. She traveled—to Russia, to India, to visit old friends in France and Switzerland. And she invited them to visit her.

She filled her life with all the things that she had always wanted—art, music, people—and freed herself from everything that did not make her happy. When she found that Bob and I could not keep from treating her like the sad old Mom she used to be, she simply cut us loose. She did not need that. For the happiest years of her life, Mom relied almost entirely on herself.

She wrote the very last note in the box when she was almost eighty. By then her arthritic hands had trouble grasping the pen, and her handwriting had turned into a hesitant wavering line. But the words are strong, positive, optimistic, without a single uncertain note. “I am not going to lower my sights,” Mom wrote. “I am going to live up to the best in myself. Even if it means some painful changes. I am no longer afraid.”

That last letter was s my mother ’ s
final gift to me, and I read it with tears running down my face. She had no way to know that I would ever find it, or how happy I would be to discover that at the end of her life she finally found her truest self. She had traveled through obedience to anger and rebellion and finally come to rest in a place where she was not only independent, but also happy.

Meeting Mom—the real Mom—was even harder than I had expected. I never thought her life was easy, but until I read her letters I had not known the enormous burden of pain that she carried with her. Each letter was like a reproach, and as I thought about the Mim Tales I wished that I had been more considerate, more understanding, that I had given her more support. Mom was so generous to me, and I gave so little in return.

In her own oblique way Mom passed on all the knowledge she had gleaned, giving me the tools I needed not to become her. Believing that work, beauty, marriage and motherhood were the forces that had shaped her destiny, she tried to teach me how to do better at each of them than she had.

Work was her most basic lesson: Using herself as an example, she made me see that working is as necessary as breathing. Mom’s strongest belief was that “it is what we are made for,” and she was convinced that those who are not useful can never be satisfied. She tried to make me see that a job was not enough; she wanted me to have the meaningful career that she herself had yearned for.

Stamped at an early age by her own lack of beauty, Mom tried to spare me that pain. The fate of men is not decided by their looks, and my mother did not want beauty—or the lack of it—to determine my destiny. Throughout human history beauty has been seen as a gift from God, but Mom had another notion; she thought that beauty could be earned through self-knowledge. It may be a revolutionary idea, but it has offered me great comfort.

Mom also had her own ideas about marriage. Unlike most women of her time, she did not think that a woman needed a man to be complete. She believed that marriage was important, but she tried to show me that it works only when it is based on mutual respect between two people who encourage each other to live up to the best in themselves.

But Mom’s most important lesson was how to be a mother. I see now how hard she tried to be a good one, despite her many handicaps. Her struggle with her own mother had shown her that it is important to encourage your children to be themselves, even if they do not turn out to be the people that you wish they were. And so she urged me to independence, asking only that I work hard, be kind and live up to my own possibilities.

Growing up, I was utterly oblivious to the fact that Mom was teaching me all that. But I was instantly aware of her final lesson, which was hidden in her notes and letters. As I read them I began to understand that in the end you are the only one who can make yourself happy. More important, Mom showed me that it is never too late to find out how to do it.

So many people helped me with this book that I will never be able to thank them all. But here’s a start.

Women in Communications: If they had not given me the Matrix Award, I never would have channeled Mom to thank them for it. And if the members had not responded so generously, I never would have tried to turn the speech into a book.

My agent, Kathy Robbins, who spent hours talking me through this project, reading pages, sending encouraging notes.

All of the people who told me stories about their mothers. I don’t think there was a single interview that did not end in tears.

My colleagues at
Gourmet
—Doc Willoughby, Larry Karol, Richard Ferretti, Bill Sertl and Robin Pellicci—who pitched in every time I said, “I can’t do that because I’m working on the book.”

My brother, Bob Half, who has always been the best big brother anyone could ever have.

My guys, Michael and Nick Singer, who are endlessly supportive.

Above all, my editor Ann Godoff, who saw exactly what this book should be even when I did not. She kept saying, “Don’t worry, you’ll get it right.” Great editing is a great gift, and it is one for which I am truly grateful.

And as always, thanks to the MacDowell Colony, where I started working on what eventually turned out to be this book. It is, perhaps, my favorite place on earth.