This Mothers’ Day I’ve been thinking about the generations of mothers that came before me; their traumas, regrets, triumphs, and love. Each new mama wishing for better lives for their offspring, hoping to avoid pitfalls from previous generations. One of those mamas was my grandmother.
My grandmother was a storyteller.
Her best stories were about her own failings. She was able to laugh at herself with such ease, it made it fun to laugh along with her. Most of her stories involved her misunderstanding something, resulting in hilarity. One of my favorites was about her family’s first automobile.
“We were so proud!” She’d lean in, offering a little historical context for us, like how long they saved for it, or how many other families had cars. “We would all pile in the car, with the parents up front. My father would pull down the drive, and my mother would look out her window, say ‘all clear,’ and off we’d go!
“One day, my mother couldn’t come, so I begged to sit in front. I clamored up, all by myself, and proudly announced ‘All clear!'” My grandmother’d lean in with a conspiratorial grin. “Only I didn’t know I was supposed to actually look to see if it was all clear.” She’d shake her head and squeeze her lips. “It was not all clear.” And thus, the story of their family’s very first automobile ends with the story of their very first automobile accident.
One day we were sitting in her living room, my firstborn asleep on my lap, when she started telling me stories about discipline. “We sure didn’t do it how you kids do it today.” I braced myself; she had a way of offering “tips” for things like sleep training and infant feeding that oozed so much confidence they felt like facts, even if I knew they wouldn’t work for us.
She told me about the tree where the kids had to cut a switch when they misbehaved. She wove her way to a time that my father, her oldest, was sick in bed, and she left my uncle, the youngest, and definitely the one labeled most likely to cause a ruckus, at home to watch him while she ran out for medicine.
“When I got back, there was your poor father, soaking wet, shivering in his bed, probably sicker, and there was his little brother hiding behind the bed, holding a bucket. Well, you know what I thought! He was always into some kind of trouble. I was so angry!” She paused. This wasn’t the lighthearted romp I’d come to expect from her stories. This story was hard to tell, and she struggled a bit. “I let him have it.”
I sat quietly, no idea how to answer.
“Well, later, after we were all calm, I asked him why on earth he’d do that to his brother. It turns out, he had seen me get cool water on washcloths to help them when they were feverish,” her words were slow and quiet. “He worried that his brother was getting hot and tried to help. He wanted to help, and I smacked him. Hard.” Even though we were five decades away from this episode of mumps, it felt immediate and heavy in the room. “I never felt so awful in my life.”
We sat together. I thought of my uncle, the youngest, proud to live up to the responsibility of caring for his big brother, deciding to help with the fever, and losing control of a big bucket of water. How awful he must’ve felt. I thought of my grandmother, harried and worried about her sick son, realizing she’d already done something that couldn’t be rescinded, how awful that must’ve felt.
“I’m glad the times are changing,” she patted our sleeping toddler, “I’m glad you don’t do it that way.”
The fever story wasn’t one she retold, but it has stayed with me, tangled in a mess of grief and love. Through that story I could see all of her.
Relational-Cultural Theory uses the term “central relational paradox”. It describes the tension between knowing in our bones that we need deep connections to survive, combined with growing up learning that certain parts of ourselves are unacceptable; that if other people saw those parts, we’d lose their connection. So we hide whatever feels risky; our flashes of anger, our waves of regret, our uncertainty and fear. Because other people are hiding theirs, we don’t get to learn that we’ve all got dark parts, stories we don’t want to tell.
Looking back, I’m so grateful for my grandmother for sharing that moment with me. That act of vulnerability and courage allowed me to see her as another human, struggling to figure out how to connect. No matter how much confidence she exhibited while offering home remedies for infant constipation and baby food recipes, she struggled with uncertainty. The matriarchal totem is full of mamas making mistakes while making meaning. I’m grateful for their wisdom.