My Mother=Me
Delta Winds: A Magazine of Student Essays
A Publication of San Joaquin Delta College
2011
My Mother=Me
Melissa Trindade
When did I become my mother? I used to ask myself this question at least once a day and until now I had no clear answer. I grew up in a single-family home, with everything run by a single mother. I didn't have any siblings to talk to or play with nor did I have a father to run to when "Mommy said no." I only had my mother. In "I Love You, I Hate You, I Am You," Iris Krasnow grows up with a two-parent household, but still feels as if no one cares about her. The essay depicts the rocky relationship with her mother all through her life until one day she realizes that she is, indeed, her mother. As with Krasnow, my childhood and teenage years were full of many storms involving my mother and me. And, just like Krasnow, I have come to an understanding of this time. Three particular storms shaped who I am and helped me to answer that nagging question: When did I become my mother?
When I was eleven years old, I was faced with my very first storm. I remember the fifth grade as the worst but the best year in school. Bringing bad grades home to my college-graduate-of-a-mother started this particular storm. My mother always expected good grades and encouraged the drive a student needs to succeed. Up until this point I had made good grades. But, throughout my fifth grade year, my teachers and I began to notice I wasn't like the other students in my class. I couldn't read as well as they could, and I definitely couldn't write as well. My teachers began to notice me struggling on a daily basis. In the classroom, I would refrain from reading aloud or raising my hand to answer. It was then at eleven years old that I was diagnosed with dyslexia. My mother took the news hard. I swear she cried for days, maybe even weeks. But all my teachers assured her that "Kids can still learn with this disability; they just learn differently." That was when the clouds opened, and a tiny ray of sunlight shone down on my mother and me. All the fights over grades and all those hours of mother-daughter tutoring seemed irrelevant. My mother realized she hadn't failed, and I realized that I wanted to become a better student. I felt that I did have the drive to succeed in school. I had that same drive that my mother had in her, the drive to graduate college, that same drive that she had impressed on me all those years.
The second storm occurred in the end of my eighth grade year. I was fourteen years old and, just like every other fresh teenager, I thought I knew everything I would ever need to know. I liked to believe that I was very independent but, looking back now, I know that I was totally crazy. My mother always tried to fit me into a cookie-cutter shape of what she thought a "perfect girl" was. I knew from early on I didn't fit that mold, no matter how hard she attempted to squeeze me in. Much to her dismay, I rebelled and fell into a bad crowd at school, but I was comfortable in the crowd; that's all that mattered to me. They made me change everything about myself. They were the Goths, the freaks, the loners, whatever you choose to call them, but they were my friends. Breaking away from my mother's idea of a "perfect girl" with pretty long hair, conservative clothes, popular with all of her girlfriends, I found myself cutting off all my hair, wearing all black clothes, and hating all those girlfriends I grew up with. Fighting was a daily ordeal for my mother and me. Wake up in the morning, fight about what I look like; come home from school, fight about what I wasn’t grateful for; before bed time, fight about all the friends I'd be on the phone with. Iris Krasnow recalls the nagging things that her mother did when she was a child. She then explains how, after creating her own family, she sees a lot of the same qualities in herself. The notion that her mother "was doing the best she could never occurred to [her]." Just like her mother, my mother would nag me about the "perfect girl" persona and the things that needed to be done her way. After one of my Goth friends committed suicide, I came to the conclusion that my mother wasn't just nagging me. All the time I spent trying to rebel against my mother I couldn't see that my mother was just trying to do the best for me. When the clouds parted, I could see that my mother's "perfect girl" mold was only there to guide me to learn to love myself. It was then that I appreciated my mother's guidance. It was then that I wanted to be that "perfect girl" my mother always dreamed of having.
The last storm between us came in my junior year of high school. It was my seventeenth birthday when we received the news that someone really close to us had passed away in a horrible car accident. My whole world came crashing down, and I felt as if a part of me had died as well. The fourteen-year-old girl left behind a mother, a father, and an older sister. I realized that that could have been me or my mother. I came to terms with the fact that everyone's days are numbered. Krasnow connects the love of family through her husband and herself. Her husband was an orphan and had no parents. As Krasnow writes, "At least I still have a mother." I believed that my mother felt lucky to still have me in her life. Although I slumped into a deep depression after the young girl's death, my mother and I grew closer. I think the ray of sunshine that shone down on us brought my mother and me closer. My mother became my best friend and in a sense my mother was truly one half of my being.
Krasnow writes "I let my mother 'be' . . . . I flow with the currents of the river instead of flailing against them." I truly understand this idea because it fits so well with my mother and me. Growing up I always fought the currents of my mother's guidance, only to come to the realization now that she was trying to help. When did I become my mother? Just as Krasnow discovers, I can see now that I always was. She has been half of my whole being all my life--through all the storms of academics, the mold of the "perfect girl." She has been the one who answered my question on understanding the value of life. I like to believe that all daughters become their mothers in more ways than they take the time to realize. After getting through all the storms, I now, as an adult, get to feel the sunshine of my mother within myself.
Work Cited
Krasnow, Iris. "I Love You, I Hate You, I Am You." Interactions: A Thematic Reader. 7th ed. Ed. Ann Moseley and Jeanette Harris. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2009. 70—74.