It isn’t the streaks of grey hair starting to pepper my brown hair. It isn’t the rushed and too often scolding tone I use with my kids when they are lollygagging out the door. It isn’t even the obvious family resemblance I finally recognized when I mistook my grandmother’s drivers’ license for my mom’s on a family visit to my grandparents home. After that mistake I poured through old family pictures of my mom’s childhood and realized that aside from the changes in fashion someone could have mistaken my mom for me. It is my hands that convince me that I am turning into my mother.
Even as I type these words, I recognize my hands not as my own but as my mother’s. The length of my fingers, the deepening lines on my knuckles and even the occasional patch of eczema do not feel like my own.
When I was born my mother was just over 30, about the same age as I was when I had my children. One day I was tucking my daughter to bed and rubbing her back when I recognized the age of my hands. That is when I noticed it. That is when I saw my mother’s hands. The hands she used to tuck me in at night. The ones that she used to pat me on the head or gently nudge me out the door to school. They are not the hands of my mother now but the hands of my childhood. They were caring, strong, firm and often tired but they were always there.
These time shifts happen more and more often for me as I watch my children grow. It is in these moments that I see the full picture, the generational dance. I often flip flop my perspective. For example, my daughter is at the age now when I encouraged my stay-at-home mother to get a job in a fabric store. She was and still is an amazing seamstress. So when I saw the Help Wanted sign, I was convinced it was her destiny. That started her successful career in retail and management for the next 8 years until she decided to go back to her dream job, raising me. My mother will tell you that I wasn’t so appreciative of my suddenly constantly present parent at 16. My brothers were already well on their way in the world. So I got a lot of attention that I wasn’t used to.
It works the other way as well. I see myself in my daughter. She looks so similar to me at her age that it is at times like looking through a window into the past. This is both comforting and terrifying. It is a glimpse back to a happy time in my life but I know her teenage years are coming and life wasn’t always easy on me during that time. I’m not naive enough to believe that life will only ever throw her softballs.
Being in the middle generation is a gift. I have never felt better about who I am or where I am going. I know how beautiful I am in every way that matters. I have earned my grey hair and my stretch marks. My wrinkles, while reminders of the slipping away of time, are also tributes to a life I am proud of… well for the most part.
Like anyone there are things I wish I could change but it is impossible for me to have a low self image. My daughter is the most beautiful girl in the world in every meaning of the word and at least in appearance she is a reflection of me. That is something to feel good about. If I can’t feel good about myself now, what will she think when she recognizes parts of me in herself later. I want her to see the beauty in that.
The benefit of the strong genetic resemblance is that I also have the benefit of seeing where I am going. My mother has a beauty of which I am not sure she is aware. Her grey hair and soft eyes show wisdom, stubbornness and intense loyalty. I hope that I continue to grow into her beauty. Her hands are more wrinkled now but they are just as strong and caring as they ever have been.
So to my mother and all the mothers out there. Happy Mother’s Day.