September 2, 2023 marked 9 years since my mother died. That nearly a decade has passed without her seems both impossible and inevitable. So much time has passed, so much has changed, I simply can no longer imagine what life would have looked like if she was still alive. Who would she be? Who would I be? I think of this parallel universe self sometimes, this self who has a mother still in the world.
I often regret that she is not here - I think she would have been a brilliant, enigmatic grandmother - and I think there are many things we could have shared together joyfully now that we are so many years past teenage angst and young adult growing pains.
But I do also wonder if the friction, perhaps inevitable, of our relationship would have hardened me to certain experiences - Would I have run more strongly toward city life, wanting to mark my difference and separateness? Would I have gone on to higher academic degrees and fancier jobs, craving her approval? Would I even be Catholic, without the memento mori raw look at life that her loss provoked in me?
Impossible questions, impossible answers. Who can say? This is a mystery and a tension I live with inside myself.
All I can say is that her oldest grandchild - Josephine Barbara - shares many of her looks and expressions and much of her focus and intensity.
Continuity is perhaps one of the strangest parts of death. It is not in any way the end point we imagine it to be.
In honor of this recent anniversary I wanted to share a piece I wrote during my pregnancy with Jo when I was looking ahead to motherhood with apprehension and excitement, trying to untangle my own complex web of feelings as a daughter without a mother. Some of my thoughts have only grown more complicated as I have both sympathized with and resented certain aspects of my mother’s parenting. But mostly I think on her very gently, with a lot of compassion. It is incredibly difficult to walk the line of self and self giving as a mother and none of us can do it perfectly. She did the best she could.
My mother was a force of nature and I’d like you to meet her.
I hope you enjoy it - and if you can, light a candle for Barbara.
During pregnancy, I think many women begin to think about their own mothers. It is one thing to understand pregnancy in its abstractions - in the quaint pictures of your mother’s big belly as she poses next to the crib. As you experience these physical changes yourself - the odd feeling of disconnect from your body as a whole other human being prods and kicks at your insides - you begin to think about your own mother and how she brought you into the world.
It has struck me as newly miraculous that every single human being alive, no matter their circumstances, no matter if their parents were ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ exists because a woman’s body became, for a time, something not entirely her own. Every person born was born to a woman who wondered and worried about the uncertainties of labor and childbirth, who felt those strange and wonderful and sometimes off-putting movements of a growing child in her womb. When I see someone on the news, someone with the ‘wrong’ politics, or the ‘wrong’ beliefs, I can’t agree with the rabid social media commentators who smirk at this person’s existence or call them less than human. That’s someone’s child, I think.
As I think of my own pregnancy and my own daughter, it has also forced me to realize, in a new and real way, I am also someone’s child.
February 1, 2021 - my mother would have been 66 years old today. Instead, she died 6 months shy of her 60th birthday - 59 years old, much too young in this modern, medically-advanced world. Now that I am pregnant, there are things I would very much like to ask her, as her little granddaughter grows bigger and more assertive by the day. As you go through pregnancy, you learn how much of the experience is shaped by genetics. When certain pregnancy symptoms would dominate my life, many times my doctor has asked me, “do you know if your mother experienced this? Because if so, you’re much more likely to.” I have to shrug helplessly and say, “I don’t know, I’m not sure.”
When I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I was shocked. I barely looked pregnant until I was about 25 weeks along, and even then my pregnant belly was easily hidden underneath a sweater. I had naively assumed diabetic pregnancies were only for women with big bellies and big babies. I didn’t understand the genetic hormonal factors at play that cause this particular complication. When I told my Dad he absently said, “Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure your mother had that.” My father is wonderful but his memories tend to have a frustrating lack of detail. Hence why I so often heard, “I’m not sure - ask your mother.”
My mother gave birth to me when she was quite a bit older than I am now. I wonder how that shaped her ideas of pregnancy and motherhood. In some ways, I think it is easier for me. I am less settled in my ideas of work or career or life. I’m willing and able to be flexible. But by the time I was born, my mother had a career, wide ambitions, a settled life she was used to. I wonder if she was ambivalent or excited or anxious. I’d like to be able to ask her how she felt.
I have also become acutely aware of my mother as a separate person from me and from our family. It is easier for me now, both because it has been nearly seven years since she died and because I am now experiencing the strange identity confusion that most mothers must feel, for me to imagine her as a young girl and teenager. She played the marimba and the piano, worked obsessively hard in school, earned straight As. She struggled in her relationship with her own mother (who I only ever knew as my charming and delightful grandmother). She missed her father as he worked in the CIA overseas. She never drank or went to parties, but she did date the kind and handsome quarterback of the football team, lending her a certain amount of popularity.
She read long works of literature, especially enjoying fantasy sagas about space and other worlds. She dreamed about horses and life in the country from the confines of her small room in a townhouse in working-class Dundalk, Maryland. My hardworking grandparents ultimately scraped enough money together to buy a horse and rent a stall when my mother was sixteen. Unfortunately the money was completely wasted: no one in the family knew anything about horses and an unscrupulous horse dealer sold them a drugged horse that died months later. I feel that tragedy in a deeper way now than when she told us this cautionary tale as children. I understand a bit more her fierce and determined love for horses, a love that had to be hard-won, with long hours mucking out stalls to pay off board and leases.
I think of the complicated fact of my life, what my existence and bringing me into existence must have meant for my mother and her life. My mother was what was then called ‘a career-woman.’ Before I was even born, an au pair was installed and ready to care for me. There was no talk of my mother staying home or taking time off from work for motherhood. It simply wasn’t an option for her. All in all I had eleven au pairs throughout childhood. In some ways, this is perhaps a more natural way to be raised, imitating the village mentality most of our female ancestors must have enjoyed. Mothers were never meant to be the sole caretakers of their children - there were always other women - sisters, aunts, grandmothers, neighbors, friends - sharing childcare responsibilities.
Yet, as we all know, that mother-child relationship holds immense psychological and emotional weight, no matter the mother’s involvement or lack of involvement. It is archetypal and foundational. While I loved each of my au pairs - got along better with some than others - and enjoyed them in their roles as pseudo aunts or sisters - my mother was always my mother, with all the heaviness that that title entails.
My mother, career-focused as she was, had initially intended to feed formula to her babies. With her being out of the house so much, it just made sense. However, my Dad, dedicated researcher, convinced her that the health benefits of breast feeding were worth the possible hassle. My mother, switching gears, became devoted to breast-feeding. She even wrote a book on the topic. I still have the unpublished manuscript and as strange as it is to read about “baby Katie” breastfeeding, there is an immense amount of practical wisdom there.
This was typical of my mother - all or nothing. Not only would she breastfeed, but she would breastfeed for years. Not only would she breastfeed, but she would write a book about the topic! A perfectionist to the core.
My mother was a venture capitalist turned entrepreneur and startup CEO. She worked at least ten hours a day, and I won’t sugarcoat how difficult this was for both me and my little sister. I distinctly remember us sighing sadly as we gazed at pictures of our parents one afternoon, black and white glamorous looking portraits from their early days in the business world. My father worked all week as an executive in an another town, coming home on weekends. When he was home, he was funny and intense and sometimes intimidating. He also liked to cook with us, or play with the dogs, or have us practice karate moves on his tensed stomach. My mother came home usually around 10 p.m., which meant I never in my life had a bedtime. We stayed up until she came home and then read stories out loud - The Wind and the Willows, All Creatures Great and Small, Harry Potter - or made up ones in bed - I still remember the tales of “Browno and Pegasus,” two flying horses that went on many adventures.
Some rules in our house were strict - there was limited T.V. when my parents weren’t home and we could only have three ‘sweet things’ a day. But many rules were broken in order for my mother to incorporate us into her life, busy and hectic as it was. As stated, bedtime was never a discussion. My mother was a night owl, so we were too. When we were very young (probably much too young), we watched Frasier and Seinfeld, we went to operas and symphonies, and we attended the black-tie dinners hosted at our house for various business ventures. My mother was obsessive about toasting and usually insisted everyone at the table say a toast at formal dinners, kids included. She may have regretted this one year when I made my most infamous toast to date: “I hope this company doesn’t fail like all of Mommy’s other companies. Cheers!” I remember grinning my toothy 8-year old smile at a sea of ashen faces that quickly (thankfully) dissolved into indulgent laughter.
The place I remember my mother best is in the barn. This is where we found our equilibrium and where, even when the tenseness of teen years made our relationship fraught and complicated, we found common ground. We ended up moving to a farm when I was about eleven years old. Before that, we boarded our horses nearby, a place I remember as a haven of dogs and horses and wide open spaces. Nearly every Saturday all three of us, my mother, my sister, and I, would be out at the barn, breathing in that comforting dusty hay smell, brushing ponies, and taking long hacks in the open air.
My mother was strict with me about my riding, much stricter than she was with my little sister, who was much more more timid. When I was eight, I was given a Connemara pony named Emmy. She was my choice. My trainer disapproved but my parents were helpless. I had fallen in love with this blood bay mare and I begged and pleaded that we could keep her after her rather shaky trial period. She bit, she kicked, and she took off with me in open fields. I broke my arm, got dragged through the woods, got stepped on, and thrown. But my mother, in her determined, steely voice, had me get back on every single time, tears or no tears, and this is perhaps one of the greatest gifts she ever gave me.
My mother loved animals fiercely and intensely. Strays were always welcome in our house and we had a hard time turning down any animal in need. I remember the night before our old black dog died, my mother was the only who understood that he was in real pain. He was so stoic. But she lay down on the floor of the living room with him all night long just letting him know she was there.
She was devoted to the care of her horses and had an especially intuitive connection with a big grey mare named Ellie. After years of thoroughbreds and sport horses (one of which had been long-listed for the Olympics) my mother wanted something quieter and safer now that she had children. A clunky percheron/thoroughbred cross fit the bill. She was young and barely broken, and for most of my childhood was quite overweight and clumsy. But she was safe and smart, tolerating pony rides and hacks and little kids running between her legs. In the way big horses do, she matured late. I ended up Eventing her through preliminary level, even winning ‘best conditioned horse’ when she was eighteen years old. These were the times my mother and I could really celebrate together. Horses were something we both understood.
I do not know if my mother would say that motherhood came naturally to her. She was an immensely caring person, kindhearted almost to a fault, and yet, she struggled with intimacy, especially with her family. She used to tell us how her own mother had struggled to have ‘real friendships,’ preferring instead the company of grocery store clerks, waiters and waitresses, gardeners, etc. It was almost like the employee-employer, clerk-customer relationship gave a certain amount of needed space that protected her from the implications of true closeness.
I never said this to my mother, but she was very similar in this way, often devoting much more time and energy to her work relationships (authentic friendships to be sure, but nevertheless ones formed and revolving around her work life) than to developing close relationships with her family. It was sometimes hurtful to hear of the thoughtful and detailed parties she planned or events she coordinated on behalf of coworkers when my sister and I could barely get her to sit still with us on the couch through a Friday night movie. There was always laundry to be done, vacuuming to be finished, another email to send.
She wasn’t like this out of any sense of neglect. Quite the opposite. She just always had to be moving, doing, active - probably why work relationships felt more natural than family life. Even vacations in the Outer Banks were dominated by projects and to-do lists. I have a very distinct image of her frantically trying to get a kite to fly along the beach while the rest of us napped in the sun.
I later learned employees sometimes referred to her as ‘the blur.’ Us at home would agree. Here, but more often - gone. A blur.
She had started an online education company, a public-school home-school model that offered classes entirely online. That may seem passe now, in the era of Zoom, but this was a pretty radical concept at the time. It was also one I, a wise and assured teenager, never approved of. Even back then, I was a snob about ‘real’ books and wary of the internet addiction I already saw starting to grow rampant in my peers. I largely stick by this philosophy. My husband and I have a very tech-lite home - satellite internet and DVDs. It’s more than enough for us.
Of course I wasn’t hearing the stories my mother was hearing, about kids who were bullied, or developmentally challenged, or even world-class athletes who needed a flexible schedule, and how much they benefited from the education model her company provided. I realize now my comments and dismissals of my mother’s life work must have hurt her. I think of sixteen years from now, how a cutting remark from the little daughter inside my belly might have the power to completely destroy my confidence and sense of self.
When I remember my mother, I like to think of a particularly happy time - when she visited Chris and I while we studied abroad at Oxford in the U.K. I distinctly remember walking down High Street to meet her. I had bangs and a trench coat and boots and felt very much the proper student. I was confident in my studies and my surroundings and bursting with stories of travels - trains to Paris, buses to Edinburgh. My mother caught sight of me and we met, almost like equals - colleagues, and embraced with real warmth. She told me it caught her off-guard, ‘how grown up’ I looked, and I had a vision of a kinder, gentler relationship between us. We went out to our favorite pub that night, toasting to a big wide future ahead. But it was not to be. It was only a year and a half later that she would get the news that she had cancer for the second time, and this time it was terminal.
With tears in her eyes, my mother once told me and my sister how our grandmother, her mother, would make her feel so guilty when we were babies. My grandmother would say, “how can you go to work and leave your perfect baby at home? why would you do this?” My mother never forgave these comments and seemed to spend a lifetime proving to my grandmother the importance of her career, even at one point bestowing a music scholarship to her alma mater in my grandmother’s name.
My grandmother never seemed to understand this distinct honor or my mother’s career ambitions. What she did understand was how to play with little girls - how to plan tea parties and play games and invent stories. My grandmother was also the one I talked to about my college studies in religion and the saints and my growing interest in Catholicism. She would lean toward me conspiratorially, “we’ve always shared this mystical side, haven’t we dear?” This is how I remember my grandmother. I never saw the domineering woman my mother sometimes told us about: a strict, judgmental person, so laser-focused on my mother that she felt she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a mistake, couldn’t have anything truly her own.
If horses were the shared language for my mother and me, music was the shared language for my grandmother and my mother. Even though a baby grand Steinway piano was the first joint purchase my parents made (before they even had living room furniture), my mother hardly ever played. Yet, every now and then, if we were all safely away in our rooms, she would sit down at the piano, and it was like no time had passed. She played elegantly and naturally. We always told her we wished she would play more, but she declined. Perhaps it reminded her too much of a childhood dominated by music lessons. She had lost the joy of it.
Meanwhile, my grandmother continued to take lessons at Peabody Conservatory, their oldest student. Well into her nineties, she played duets with a friend every week. When Chris would play for her, she would swoon with admiration. She loved the romantics especially - Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky.
There was one Christmas where my mother and my grandmother sat down to play duets together - a rare, shared moment at the piano that we all remembered long after.
It frightens me a little, this disconnect between mothers and daughters. I wonder about who my mother hoped to be, the mother she hoped to be, and how I have failed to see this ideal image in my own memories of her. I wonder what flawed images and memories my own daughter will form about me.
But I also think of the ways I was able to see the many good things my mother was incapable of seeing. While she was (to many people’s surprise) often very insecure, I always saw her as capable, straightforward, honest. I never doubted for a moment her integrity or her dedication. I have always had a hard time relating to women’s struggles with confidence or self-assurance. Wherever I went, my Mom was the CEO. Sometimes it felt a little like being with a celebrity. Although she told me about the sexism she experienced early on in her business career, I simply never doubted women could do absolutely anything they wanted to do.
My parent’s marriage was supportive, with my father always encouraging my mother, in business or in horses or in home improvement. And both my parents were always endlessly supportive of my sister and I, never pressuring us into ‘practical’ careers, and instead celebrating our unique talents - Art in my sister’s case, Literature and the humanities in mine. I still remember how one year, after presenting a paper at a medieval history conference on St. Catherine of Siena, my mother had a t-shirt made with the name of the conference on it for me. It was such a bizarre and wonderful gift and it still makes me laugh.
When my mother was actively dying, but also actively in denial, she did a very radical thing. She started calling Chris my fiance to strangers, even though we were not yet engaged, and she bought us a very posh townhouse in Georgetown, D.C. This was a house I did not want and felt very uncomfortable with (this was not exactly the normal housing for a graduate student). She spent the last months of her life decorating that house, ironically with furniture and paintings from my grandmother. The house didn’t reflect me or Chris in the slightest and when I gently suggested I may want to move the series of flower portraits on the wall, she broke into tears, telling me how long it had taken her to hang them up. After that, I didn’t ask questions. She said, “I may not have been a very good mother, but at least I did this for you,” and before I could even give her a hug or reassure her, she had turned away from me.
And when, a few weeks later, I visited her in hospice, lamely trying to show her the “Georgetown Mom” sweatshirt I had brought for her, I realized she initially didn’t know who I was. She looked so sad and tired and worn out, not like my mother at all. I started to cry. It was only when I was crying that she really looked at me and realized I wasn’t a nurse. “Oh, Katie,” she said in a tender sigh of recognition. “It’s you.”
When I was younger and angry with my mother, she would come into my room late at night and say, “you know I love you more than anything in the world, don’t you?” Sometimes I didn’t know. But in that moment of recognition in the hospice bed, in that quiet, awful moment, I knew it without a doubt.
This year, as has become a tradition, I picked a saint of the year. With the help of Jen Fulwiler’s Saint Name Generator I was matched with St. Brigid of Ireland, a saint I was initially pleased with because of my love for Ireland and her appropriate patronage of expecting mothers and children. It was only later that I learned her feast day was February 1st, my mother’s birthday.
February 1st, St. Brigid’s Day, has also traditionally been marked as a liminal day in Ireland, a day of transition, the first celebration of winter melting into spring. All of this seems exactly as it should be, only a little over a month away from when my daughter is expected to make her appearance in the world. I think of this transition - from the person I know myself to be - to someone’s mother.
My daughter will have her own ideas of who I am, just as I have my own ideas of who my mother was. Sometimes we will reflect each other clearly, sometimes the image will be blurred and distorted.
And I think, too, of my own mother - of who she was before me, and after me, and how we shaped one another in complete and awful and, ultimately, beautiful ways.
In Memoriam, Requiem Aeternam.
Ooff. Motherhood, man.
This was so good though, a great look at how motherhood is never one thing, it's never one impression or perfect way of relating. It's everything everywhere all at once as it were.
Katie that was a beautiful ode to your beloved Mom. It was very kind of you to share so many touching & reflective memories. It choked me up actually- when you spoke about Georgetown & then the hospice care...As you wrote about her- I too reflected about my Mom... the truly good & some things that I wish knew more about or had more time with her. Their special ways have left a glowing touch upon us.