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Retirement column: A mom vs. daughter love story

I just read a wonderful memoir called The Bridge Ladies by Betsy Lerner. It’s a Jewish version of The Joy Luck Club , except the four older women in this book meet weekly to play bridge.

I just read a wonderful memoir called The Bridge Ladies by Betsy Lerner. It’s a Jewish version of The Joy Luck Club, except the four older women in this book meet weekly to play bridge.

What’s slightly unnerving is the painfully disjointed way Lerner connects with her mother. I say that because it resembles my own strained relationship with my late mother. Except that Lerner had the opportunity to peel back the layers of her mother’s neuroses, anxieties and fears while her mom was still alive. Over time, Lerner unravels the truth about her mother’s life, and decodes the tangled emotions that held her mother at bay.

The difference is, I watched as my mother slipped away from me slowly, tugged inexorably by the steel grip of dementia. So many unanswered questions. So many missed opportunities to sort out our differences and come to a détente. Not that I ever expected us to magically understand one other. But I never even got up to bat.

Lerner steals words right out of my mouth when she writes: “Was I ever going to be good enough?” How often have I felt that sadness seep into my bones; that feeling of inadequacy. No matter how hard I tried, how accomplished I became, it was never quite good enough. I used to joke that if I wanted to feel bad about myself, I’d go spend an hour with my mother. Not so funny anymore.

Lerner’s mother Roz, was part of a weekly bridge group for decades, and when Lerner took on the challenge of interviewing each of the bridge ladies (and some of the daughters) she hears things that resonate deeply. It seems that other daughters had the same difficulties relating to their mothers as Lerner did. When she asks one bridge daughter what she wishes from her mother if she could ask for just one thing, the daughter replies: “Could you accept me for who I am?”

Roz’s generation of women prided themselves on privacy and toughing it out alone. Emotions were a no-fly zone. Families tamped down their pain and disappointment and put on a brave face; one that Lerner was determined to strip away.

My family was the opposite. Emotions were on display 24/7 at home. From the outside looking in, our life was perfection: a well-educated mother, a doctor father, two daughters, live-in help, and a beautiful home. From the inside looking out, a whole other story; the issues bubbling just below the surface.

My mother never opened up to me, nor I to her. It was always my father who was privy to the details of my adolescent crushes, or my careless antics as a young adult. My mother and I held no common ground.

Had I the chance to know my mother in a more open, honest way, it would have softened my heart. But I was too busy fighting her on every front. Even at the start of my mother’s dementia, I still fought her, misguided in the belief that she really wasn’t all that sick. That it was just manipulation.

 All this begs the question: Does the truth set us free? Or does it complicate life even more? I may never know.

Shelley Civkin’s retirement column appears regularly in theRichmond News