motherless mothers

I am finally reading this book. It is called Motherless Mothers and is written by Hope Edelman. Ms. Edelman has made a career of missing her mother. Her other books include Motherless Daughters, Letters from Motherless Daughters, and Mother of my Mother. I think that we can safely say that losing her mother was the defining moment of Hope Edelman's life. I usually linger past her books in bookstores in libraries. I have read large segments of both Motherless Daughters and Letters from Motherless Daughters standing in the stacks of the Hollywood Library or sitting at the train table at Barnes and Noble. I even went to hear her speak two years ago when she was in Portland promoting Motherless Mothers. When you live in Portland it is inevitable that you will run into someone that you know every time you leave your house. That night I learned that at least two acquaintances of mine had mothers who died when they were still young. A club I didn't want to join. I said goodbye to my friends and left without doing what virtually every other woman there was doing, buying the book.

When I decided to read this book I bought it rather than check it of the library. It seems important somehow that I own this book. But, why now? It has something to do with the process that I going through. Writing every (or nearly every) day is teaching me to shed a certain layer of skin. It is scary. If I am going to be an honest writer than I am going to have to stop hiding the parts of myself that I can't face. If I am going to be an honest person and if I have anything at all to offer to the world it is time to stop running away. Hope Edelman wrote all of these books because her mother's death is her story. You can feel this as you read her words. The words jump out at you from the page and crackle with energy. Raising her daughters without her mother is part of her story. I am reading her book now to learn how she does it.

How does she search for ultimate meaning within her story? How does she weave her experience throughout the larger context of what it is like to be a mother without a mother? And of course it's no accident that I've chosen this book to pick apart. I am becoming a fearless reader. Go ahead, books, delve into my inner pain and extract meaning. I dare you! It's amazing though what happens when I shed the fear of these books that I have been avoiding. Like those in Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, Ms. Edeleman's words are touching me but very lightly.

Her writing is good. She reaches that difficult blend of friendly and literary. She comes across as compassionate and self-aware. She even acknowledges the absurdity of basing her professional life upon her mother's death. Much of what she writes about I can absolutely relate to. The part about how motherless mothers have the impulse the keep their children from their mother-in-law. If my mother can't see my child than neither can you. The loneliness of trying to be a mother without having a mother. She has a wonderful imaginary conversation with her mother on the phone. One in which her mother asks to speak to Hope's children. Her children are involved in their play and don't come to the phone. Hope's "mother" is offended both by the fact that the children don't want to speak to her and that Hope does nothing to force the issue. They hang-up unsatisfied. I loved this! I always tend to over-glamorize what all of our lives would be like if mom were still alive. I would have my mother, the kids would have their grandma, life would be perfect. Hope Edelman reminds me that no relationship is really like this. Mom and I fought all of the time. This wouldn't have changed if she hadn't died.

One thing I have gotten from reading the book is that while I am still terribly sad about mom, her death is not the central story of my life. The day that she died was the day that I became a grown-up. A real grown-up though, age 25, not a sped-up before-her-time grown-up like Ms. Edelman did at 17. Mom was alive to guide me through every significant passage to adulthood and for this I am forever grateful. It is devastatingly sad that we never got to have a relationship as adults. Even more so that she never met my children. But with me she did her job. She did it well.

Eventually I stopped reading this book page to page and started reading the story that was just Hope's. I liked her a lot but got bored by her writing, by her countless interviews. I skipped the section on raising teenagers without a mother altogether although it is possible that I may turn back to it when it is more relevant. But maybe not. This chapter is largely about parenting without a model. How to be a mother during those years when you yourself had no model. Luckily for me mom was absolutely present for my teen years. In the end I got some of what I wanted to out of reading this book. How to take your own story and market it as a book. I caught a glimmer of that. I didn't learn all that much about being a motherless mother but really how could I? It's who I am. But, it's not my story.