What Ifs

I often spend time fantasizing about what it would be like, as a woman, to have a mother. I have seen examples of women who’s mothers are their best friends. I also know of women who can only tolerate their mothers in small doses. I have heard of women who resent their mothers, and even women who are not speaking to their mothers. Mother and daughter relationships can vary so much. Since I was only five when I lost my mother, I really have no experience, or at least no recollection of my relationship with my mother. It is something that I am so curious about. If my mother was alive today, who would she be to me?

There are so many possibilities, when I think about it, of how things could be for me if I had a mother at this point in my life. Would I be able to call her up anytime and say, “Mom, I’m dying here. I really need a break. Could I drop the kids off for a couple of hours?” Oh, how I envy the women who have that kind of relationship with their mothers.

Would she have been by my side during those first weeks of being a new mother, cooking, cleaning, walking with the baby so I could have the sleep I so desperately needed? Would I spend hours upon hours every week talking with her, or having marathon phone conversations? Would we come up with absurd skits together, and laugh our faces off at each other? Would we sing together in harmony, bake together at Christmas, and spend hours out together, having lunch and shopping? Would I help her to stay young by keeping her in stylish clothes and hip hairdo’s? She would be sixty-five now, had she lived. Maybe she’d be completely gray and wearing unflattering, unfashionable clothes. Would that matter to me?

Maybe my mom and I would be too different. Maybe we wouldn’t always get along so well, and avoid spending time together. It’s possible that my mom would not have appreciated my sense of humour. I’ve learned that she had a great sense of humour. She loved Carol Burnett. She was also a lover of good and pure things. Sometimes when I write, or even speak, my thoughts can come across as bold, even questionable. I have a feeling that my mom might not have been able to deal with my candidness, at times.

If my mother had lived, would I be the same woman I am today? Would I be more successful in the eyes of the world? Would I have less emotional baggage - less regrets? Would I have done more things to my full potential? Would I have been a scholar because I had my mom to keep me on track, support me, help me and guide me? Would I have experienced less disappointment, and wasted less time because my mother was there to give me that kick in the butt that I needed so badly? Would I be a better writer, musician, actress, and artist, because she was so strong in those areas? Maybe I wouldn’t even like the arts, because I could have been one of those women who does NOT want to become her mother.

I could have been more rebellious, had I had a mother. Being one of six children raised by my dad, I didn’t have rules, so much as expectations. I think, rather than verbally giving us rules of what NOT to do, my dad led by example, hoping that guilt would keep us in line. Guilt did keep us in line most of the time. We love our dad so much, that doing anything that would hurt him would be too much guilt to bear. Did we never go astray? No. We definitely did. But knowing the pain that we could cause our dad, we protected him as much as possible, and it helped us to get back on track. Maybe if mom had lived, we wouldn’t have worried so much about disappointing our dad, because he had her to lean on.

I could speculate on so many things, but it all comes down to the fact that I didn’t know my mother. I have read her journals and gathered bits and pieces of information from family and friends who knew her, which has really helped me to feel that I know some things of what she was like. Do I feel ripped off? Of course I do! It doesn’t mean that I think my life would be 100 percent better if she was alive, it just means that I was robbed of the experience of knowing my mother. I can go on forever with the what ifs and the maybes, but the reality is that I will never know what it’s like to have a mother. So for now, I will continue to fantasize about my life if things had been different - if that one tragedy that defines me had never happened.