To my mom, hair is the yardstick by which civilized people are measured—and that includes me. She scolds me if my hair drifts into my eyes (“Get it off your face”), for not getting it cut short enough (“I hope the hairdresser paid you for that cut”), or for not having age-appropriate hair (“A woman your age should have a neat, smart hairstyle”).
When she spots an agreeable style in a magazine or in a shopping mall she shoots me a baleful look and says: “There’s a nice style for you.” A tight smile or a nod indicating total agreement from me is usually sufficient to end the conversation— until she hones in on another passing hairstyle. Lately, she’s been pushing a short streaky blond bob as the elixir to happiness. The fact that such a hairstyle would not work with my face shape, my personality, or my impossibly fine, unpredictable dark hair is inconsequential.
If I have learned anything in life, it is that my one-day-limp, next-day-curly hair is best left alone. Over the years, I have made peace with my hair, but I have not done so with my mother. I wanted us to go to Italy to see if I could finally fall in love with her. This trip was my olive branch.
I wasn’t going to allow her question about my hair to bug me. Not one bit.
I looked up nonchalantly from the magazine I was perusing and flashed a calm smile to mask the emotional maelstrom that was swirling and slopping inside me like the contents of the boiling cauldron being stirred by the Three Witches.
“Dishevelled is my look,” I said playfully, tousling my hair as I prepared to shift the conversation to our travel itinerary.
“Your hair looks like your life,” she said.
WHAT WOULD possess anyone to go to Italy, the Land of Love, with a sparring partner?
The answer: it was part détente, part deathbed request.
It has been a source of sadness and perplexity that my mother and I have not been able to get along. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not always a battle. The wary coolness between us has evaporated during moments of laughter or when we have weathered loss together. She never turned down a request to look after my children when I was struggling to adapt to single parenthood; she has always been a kind and generous grandparent. I, too, have been there for her: when she falls ill or when she needs my help around her home. She has even been known to seek my opinion.
Still, the tectonic plates of our relationship have never stopped shifting, and the fault lines—there’s an interesting metaphor—have, according to my mom, been entirely my creations. She also thinks I am too sensitive—and there is no question that I am—but she doesn’t think she needs to modify her tact when dealing with me.
“You take my words too seriously,” she scolds impatiently.
“Really?” I reply. “So when you say that my hair looks like a rat’s nest I should just laugh it off?”
“No,” she answers thoughtfully. “You should go to a hairdresser and do something about it.”
It’s that sort of no-win bickering.
Then there is the matter of the deathbed request:
“Make friends with your mother,” my father had instructed as I sat on the edge of his hospital bed a few weeks before he died.
I had wanted to scream, “CAN’T YOU JUST ASK ME TO WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE? THAT WOULD BE EASIER!”
When my father died in 1999, Mom and I lost our mediator and our buffer. We were left to soldier on through the minefield of our relationship as best we could. We maintained an awkward truce while marching to the beat of old drums.
Now, with life ebbing away and my mother’s health issues mounting, I decided to be proactive and use what time we had left to set things right—if that were at all possible. So I came up with this ingenious idea of a trip to Italy. I wanted to see whether my mother and I could spend six weeks together without biting off each other’s head, six weeks so distracted by art and antiquity that we could see each other as the individual works of art—flaws and all—that we are. I wanted to get to know this woman I call Mom, a woman I’m pretty certain, deep down, I love—but have had trouble liking. I hoped that in Italy the conversations I’ve always wanted to have with my mother would bubble up and help ease, if not resolve, decades of discontent.
I believe we take two trips when we embark on a journey of almost any duration: there’s the physical trip, with its attendant need for schedules, accommodations, maps, and fretting about what to pack, how much money to bring, where to go and what to see, all the while anticipating possible calamities. Then there’s the parallel journey, the internal journey. We talk about “leaving it all behind,” but in reality a lot of emotional and primal baggage accompanies us on our travels. Trips are as much about testing ourselves or seeing how we adapt to a new place or to unfamiliar circumstances as they are about exploring new territory. Removing ourselves from our daily routines, from day-to-day relationships, from regimentation, allows us to see ourselves and others more clearly in new surroundings. Sometimes it allows us to resolve a gnawing problem or to find clarity about a situation or event from our present or our past. In this, I was no different: I wanted to resolve the mother-daughter dilemma.
Most daughters have an uneasy or tempestuous relationship with their moms. Just ask them, and stand by for a torrent of venting. It’s usually a one-sided complaint—most mothers will rarely admit to difficulties with their daughters (and being the mother of a daughter I know of what I speak). Show me a mother who claims to have a great relationship with her daughter, and I’ll show you a daughter in therapy.
Privately, many mothers fret about their relationships with their daughters. Maybe that’s because mothers see themselves most clearly in their daughters. When they are successful we feel a shared sense of accomplishment; when an argument flares between mother and daughter it is like arguing with ourselves. I gleaned this handy bit of insight from Don the electrician. An electrician. How apropos.
One morning, while Don was fishing wires through a wall in my home, my daughter’s fuse blew. I can’t remember what the issue was, but I do clearly recall trying to keep the argument quiet because, well, I really dislike public displays of aggression. Zoë had no such reservations, and our quarrel regrettably escalated to the point where the electrician felt it prudent to intervene.
“You know why you two are arguing, don’t you?” Don interrupted, straining to be heard above our raised voices.
Zoë and I froze, a bit shocked by the intrusion but nonetheless curious about what he had to say.
“Because you’re both exactly the same!” he said with exasperation.
Zoë stormed off, horrified by the verdict. My reaction was quite different: The Little Voice Inside let out a victory cry of “Yes!” Deep down, mothers yearn for their daughters to be mirror images of themselves. For daughters, it’s different.
There’s nothing worse for a woman than to be told, “You’re just like your mother.” Not even when it is said in a nice way.
I’ll admit: I sometimes live vicariously through my daughter. Zoë is the type of young woman I wanted to be at her age: smart, confident, unafraid to push back against authority. (She also does amazing, twisty things with her hair, a knack I can’t even begin to learn). I was very much a late bloomer when it came to finding my groove. Seriously late: like, in my forties. Some of that emotional growth spurt occurred while Zoë was flexing her teenage spirit, and her newfound feistiness occasionally clashed with mine. It was a marked contrast to my teenage rebellion and my own mother’s midlife awakening. Whereas I let the reins on my daughter slacken slightly, my mother gripped them tighter and yanked on them. She was often strict and sharp with me and never short on advice about how to improve my life or my appearance. Handwritten notes accompanied by pertinent newspaper clippings or religious homilies frequently appeared in my mailbox.
I just knew that another