Who Do You Know?

Have you ever thought about how perceptions and relationships work hand-in-hand? And how life experiences change people?

Take my relationship with my mother. I do not feel a heart-wrenching love for her. But I honor all she did for me—the nightly meals, the endless driving to this music lesson and that music performance, the teaching of sewing. There was much emotional abuse of me on her part, but—after many years of therapy—I am able to imagine that was the result of the poor parenting she received, particularly from a harsh father. She evidently learned to be harsh at the feet of a master. I don't know this; I merely surmise it. She is not a person who talks about such things. Or anything, really, except the Bible and the writings of Ellen G. White and the impending second coming of Christ.

But what was she like at 23 or 24 when she married, or at 25 when her first pregnancy ended at six months with a stillborn baby girl? What was she like when she and Daddy moved to Orlando, she at age 31 with a toddler, for him to begin his medical practice? What was it like for her to retire from full-time nursing and care for a house and two little boys while Daddy was more and more absent, attending to his practice, his hospital patients, and pregnant patients who would go into labor at 3:00 a.m.? What was it like for her to hope for a darling daughter and, by the luck of the draw, get a daughter who never met her expectations? A daughter whom her husband adored, and paid more attention to than to her?

The mother that my brothers knew in their formative years was very different from the mother I knew. And the 55yo mother my sister-in-law met was, again, a totally different person than all those other mothers.

When I say something about Mother to my sister-in-law, there is frequently shock or confusion on her face. She doesn't know what my life was like, but she respects me and believes my words. She just has her own perceptions. And her relationship with Mother, and my brothers' relationships, are based upon their perceptions of that woman they grew up knowing.

This whole train of thought grew out of a statement T.J. made to me about daughters loving their mothers. That's a presumption that cannot and should not be made. As the old song says, "No one knows what goes on behind closed doors." And the presumption that each child has the same relationship with each parent can also not be made. I try to be a good daughter to my mother, because I feel she deserves that. But that's as far as it goes.

People grow. People change. Isn't life funny?