I’m Making a Molehill Out of A Mountain, She Says. Indeed.

I know. Sorry for the secrecy. I do not appreciate when others do the same on their blog. Because I need to know everything! Unbloggable things drive me crazy! No reader left behind and all.

But sometimes, just when I am ready to open certain emotional valves and let them gush, I chicken out and start thinking way too much about what to share and what not to share.

On one hand, this is my forum, my space, my journal, my life, so I want to be able to write about whatever I want. I do it for cathartic reasons as well as because I like to have a snapshot of my past, a blueprint for my future. And also because I just like to write. But is it my place to expose another’s life, even if it does intersect with mine? If a friend tells me about second thoughts she has about her husband, can I write about that? About how it makes me think about commitments and relationships and how the grass is never greener on the other side? Obviously I would omit names and identifying details, but it still feels like an invasion of her privacy. So I don’t. I censor myself and those thoughts and feelings get bottled up. But if this were a journal I wrote in and kept between my mattress and box spring, you better believe it would include such pontifications.

I haven’t exactly made it a secret that have a difficult relationship with my mother. While this doesn’t make me unique, I do think that some of our circumstances are. When we have a fight or a situation or whatever you want to call it, I get into details with friends, or with Nicole, but these are just little glimpses of moments, peeks behind the curtain, just quick scenes from a life. They hardly tell the whole story. But a moment does not a relationship make. Everyone responds in appropriate ways and then act as my coach or cheering section or just the ear who listens. I am always amazed that most people can intuit exactly what I need in particular moments.

But like the proverbial onion, there are so many layers here. I can tell you about a blow-up, but that hardly presents an accurate picture. And while I like having an outlet, I also want solutions. I want someone to make it better for the future and I want one of those Clorox pens to erase emotional stains of my past.

I read Tori Spelling’s book because I heard that she talked about her notoriously difficult relationship with her own mother in it. I tore through the book at record reading speed (no easy feat with two babies). And I was disappointed, because I irrationally expected Tori (yes, we are on a first name basis) to provide Answers. But she didn’t have any. Her relationship was tattered and stitched and torn and broken and healing and suffering, just like mine. I left wanting more.

And I got more in, of all places, on her reality show. On a recent episode she lamented her relationship with her mother. She looked incredulous as her husband suggested she just cut all ties with her. She looked sad and wounded and hurt. But she really hit the nail on the head when she said that she is excited that she will have a good relationship with her daughter but laments that she never had it herself with her own mother. Yes yes yes. THAT is what her book should have been about. That is what I want to talk about.

So now people like her and me, we embark on motherhood without a roadmap, with the best of intentions and many, many fears. I feel very lucky to be in this position (one of the aftershocks of infertility) but at times I am scared out of my mind. And I still [irrationally] feel like I need to heal the past and protect the future with my mother. This is, after all, one of the most important relationships in our lives. Yet it seems to get the shaft, as we grow up and focus more on relationships with spouses and friends and our own children. A parent has unconditional love for their child, but does a child have to have unconditional love for their parent? To me, a relationship seems lopsided if they don’t. I will love my daughters no matter what. But I expect them to love me too, no matter what. For me, that reciprocity is the ultimate glue in any relationship. Maybe I am alone in that thinking, but I stand by that.

Maybe my expectations are too high and maybe I just have a hard time accepting reality. Maybe I just need to protect myself, my girlfriend and my children. But, in situations like this, what might be best to do isn’t the easiest thing to do.

So now I focus on my own girls. I want my daughters to be proud of me. I want them to love me unconditionally. I want them to be annoyed with me, and get past it. I want them to think of me as a keeper of traditions; a creature of habit; a baker of delicious cookies; a popper of popcorn for movie night; a recorder of their memories. A reader, a writer, someone who does crafty things. I want to be their fan, their coach, their ear and cheering section, as my friends have been for me. Most of all I want to be someone who is always, always there for them. Someone who can slide her own issues and priorities to the back burner for them. As we tell the girls all the time when we play Flying games with the girls, Mommys are always a soft place to land. And I mean that metaphorically as well.

The above title, a comment my mother made to me recently. Hello, Freudian slip. Indeed at times I feel like I take this mountain and reduce it because to deal with it had-on is just way too daunting.

Pictured above, despite everything, will I be able to be a good mother? I look at their little faces and I hope like I have never hoped for anything in my life that I can.