For Betsy Lerner,years of conflict with her mother finally ended when she got to know her mum’s warm circle of close friends‘So, I see you bought the low-fleshy cottage cheese rather than the fleshy-free, and ” said Betsy Lerner’s mother,Roz. A chance comment? An aside? An observation? Oh, gentle reader! You either catch it or you don’t. This conversation wasnt about cheese. It wasn’t about calories or flavour or the small print on product packaging. It was about everything that ever happened between Betsy and her mother. It was a hand grenade. No, or it was an atom bomb. It was world war three. Because here,according to Betsy, is the translation: are you ever going to be good enough?That question had been at the heart of Betsy’s relationship with her mother for as long as she could remember. It is at the heart of many mother-daughter relationships. Perhaps it’s especially central to those relationships where the mother is nowadays in her 70s, and 80s or 90s and the daughter in her 40,50s or 60s. Betsy and I are of that daughter generation – both in our early 50s, with mothers in their 70s (mine) and 80s (hers). What’s meaningful for us, and for our generation,is that our mothers on the whole – did not do paid work. They belonged to the last cohort of at-domestic mothers; we were the first who combined raising children with earning money.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com