A Short Excerpt:
Mother and daughter relationships are like a dance. The partners move toward each other and away, around and about, and some movements are wild and abrupt while others are more carefully attuned. Over the years the rhythm changes, but one thing is certain: the dance continues to the end.
The rhythm may shift when one of the dancers (usually the daughter) signals that she wants to be less connected. Phone calls and emails are not answered or visits are canceled. There are subtle nonverbal cues; a kiss brushed aside, a vague unavailability. Some mothers are quick to sense that their daughters want more distance. The question, then, is how to respond. A few mothers directly ask their daughters what’s going on—but more often than not, they retreat in anger, hurt, or confusion.
Being a mother at any age is a precipitous task. Perhaps even more so when a woman is in her later years, looking back over the course of her life and focusing on the state of her relationship with her daughter. If their bond is strong, there is a desire to preserve what they have, and if there is tension, to resolve it. Mothers want things settled. Time is short. No longer is there a hazy span of years opening to the future, and this realization brings a sense of urgency.
Yet living with this sense of urgency is too disruptive, and the impulse is to push away these disturbing thoughts. The concerns of everyday life take precedence. Schedules must be kept, calls made, obligations fulfilled. Their relationships with their daughters slip into a familiar perspective and life goes on in its confounding, messy way.