Other Mothers

This isn't the first time I've wondered if I'm related to my mother. Did I actually come from a woman who spends her days baking cookies and travels in a trailer. A woman who seems to base so much of her self-worth on men's opinions of her, her face glowing most when given a compliment about her slender figure. And it is sometimes when I catch glimpses in myself of the things I hate in her, that I most wish we were not related. Then, at least, I could wonder where such flaws come from.

Growing up I never knew my father. I knew of him, but he was not a part of my life. This left open a world of possibilities. As a child I thought that my father could be Elvis--Why else would my mom listen to his records repeatedly? But when it came to my mother, the doors were all closed and the flawed woman I was left with, was undoubtedly my mother, my real mother.

But my dreams of other mothers don't exist only due to my distaste for my own mother's characteristics and behaviors. Sometimes, it is the strength, beauty, intelligence or intrigue of an older woman with whom I come in contact that makes me wish that she, not the baker who reads Patricia Cornwell novels, were actually my mother. I imagine how much better I would have turned out had I been born to one of these well-educated and sophisticated women instead of the farmer's daughter I was stuck with.

I could add the perfunctory claims that none of this means that I love my own mother any less--which is exactly what this statement is sounding like. But really, I think that I would love my own mother more if I felt that we had more in common or if I didn't find the very traits that we do have in common to be the ones I most dislike about myself.