Nobody Loves Me Better
by Jill Miller Zimon

My mother hates my hair color. She says it’s unprofessional, a color only men like and, if I want to be taken seriously, I’ll retreat to dishwater brown.

I give her compliments too. A few years ago, after she had cosmetic surgery, I told her she looked creepy. Who wouldn’t want me for a daughter?

And yet, while I finished up graduate school, she planned my wedding.  For Halloween, she makes my kids’ costumes.  And when she visits, she mends all of my family’s buttonless, seam-torn, hole-in-the-knees clothing.  In fact, I let her commandeer my house. I don’t buy food for days because she shops and pays for everything. She even retrieves towels from unfolded piles of laundry, then folds the rest. Not like I fold, but I let it slide.

Do I feel guilty? Am I abusing the woman who delivered me and survived teaching me how to drive a stick shift?

The truth is, my mother can’t help herself. She’s become the mother she never had as an adult daughter. And that’s what I feel guilty about.

My mother was 27 years old and parenting three kids ages 7, 4 and 1 when her mother died of breast cancer at 52. She became motherless at a time when young mothers depended on their extended family for answers about marriage, childrearing and personal growth. No one consulted Dr. Phil, What to Expect When You’re Expecting books or iparenting.com in 1966.

After I call her to ask if there’s any substitute for matzo cake meal, and what the heck is matzo cake meal anyway, I think about how she never had anyone to ask these same questions. When she agrees without hesitation to fly to Ohio at her expense and baby-sit so that my husband and I can have a long weekend alone, I’m aware that she never had a mother around to do that for her.

And now, the closer I get to the age when my mother battled her own breast cancer, the more I think about what it must have been like to be young with no mother. I tell myself, be kind. Don’t laugh or criticize when she says she’s lugging 15 pounds of brisket to my house for Passover so I won’t have to cook. Let her point out as many times as she wants that I’ve overloaded my cupboards with carbohydrates or that I should prefer exercise to sleep.

Because she’s also the mother who sends me a corny card for each birthday. She’s the mother who stuffs hundred dollar bills in my hands so I can buy things for myself that I wouldn’t otherwise consider. She’s the mother who knits sweaters for my family plus my kids’ stuffed animals and Barbie dolls. She’s the mother who bakes homemade macaroni and cheese for me even though she’s on the Atkins diet.

In my life, I treasure every day I hear my mother tell me she hates my hair. Because at least she’s here to tell me.

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