My mother and I have never been friends. I had wanted her to be my friend — I remember asking her if she would be when I was a teenager — but I was rebuffed. My mother is a Freudian, and told me that mothers and daughters are not friends. She could not be my friend by definition: she was my mother.
Strangely, now that I am a mother, I find myself asking my seven-month-old daughter, repeatedly, "Who's my best friend?" expecting that somehow she will answer, "Me!" I've done this within earshot of both my husband and my mother, to be told by both of them, repeatedly, that she is not my friend; I am her mother.
Which seems suddenly strange. As with all of the new feelings that come with new motherhood, one that feels especially novel and suddenly strong is my connection to my daughter. We sleep during the same hours; we spend all of our time together; when she is hungry my breasts automatically fill with milk. If she is not my friend, I wonder, who is?
When I was a teenager I wanted my mother to be my friend so that she would understand me. I envied the mother/daughter relationships that some of my friends had, with mothers who sat on the couch, barefoot and crossed legged, and listened to them talk about boys.
My mother was a stranger.
My mother was not this kind of mother. By the time I was sixteen I had told her I hated her thousands of times, and truly felt that I meant it. I could not understand her — she was so private and foreign to me. She seemed guarded, defensive and told me very little about herself. My mother was a stranger.
What was unbelievable, all through my adolescence and twenties, was the proof: there were photo albums that showed something completely different. In them, my young mother and the baby version of me held each other, looked into each other's eyes, touched each other's hands and mouths. Once we were in love, the pictures told me, in albums and albums she had put together and written captions for. Albums where she had written in black ink on the scrapbook page, quoting me saying, "I love you," even though I could hardly speak.
Although she was not my friend, I carried this idea of my mother around with me as a way of defining myself; my mother told me that the closeness we had had in my early childhood had been important in my development, and I believed her. However, I could never reconcile the two mothers — the one in the pictures and the one I knew — until my own daughter was born.
