the haunting......

I saw her this morning. I came out of the shower and looked in the mirror and there she was. My Mother. Different hair, a slightly more relaxed look, but it was her,  the eyes. It has left me to ponder, how much joy did she feel? Peace? Did she ever look around and know in that moment she was right where she should be? Did that give her comfort or scare the shit out of her?
The lines around my eyes are the same, the color, shape and many times, the expression. The things that have shaped the lines and expression are more similar than I could know.
The differences are too many to count.

On the surface our lives are nothing alike. My Mother was married twice, both times to alcoholics. She had four children. Mothered three of them. She never had a career of her own. She had loyal friends. I remember a wonderful sense of humor, although i can no longer recall the sound of her laugh.

I have (and still am) married only once. I have two children, mothered one. Thankfully my husband is not an alcoholic or drug addict. I have my own business and career. I have many loyal friends. I think I have a pretty great humor but too often find I have not heard my laugh often enough through the day.

Sometimes I think that she lived to timidly, she left no tangible record, or did she? When I look at my actions in life, have they not been modeled after hers? Or at the very least intentionally done differently? As far as living timid, that has been a good portion of my existence. Every so often reaching out to make an impression (that seems obvious if you are reading what I have written here).

Who did she tell her stories too? was I too young to hear? understand? Or did she keep her inner life to herself. Had social media been available would it have been different?

I have journaled for a very long time, not as consistently as I would aspire to (apparently the same with the blog). It began as a way to express myself with out being judged. It then became a need, to leave a part of myself for my children, so they could know, understand who I was and what I have done, when i can no longer tell them. (there is that tic toc again). Is it important for our children to know us as we were or only what we present to them in the now?

I am haunted in my own life by some of these unanswered questions. Would my life be different if I knew what my Mother was like? more of her experiences? her lessons?

I don't dwell the way I used to on what I was missing in my life, at least what I have perceived as missing. Perhaps creating an ideal that could have never existed. The risk I run with my daughter is to expect an ideal in my relationship with her, to try to create what I believe was missing in mine. I love her so much, she is very much her own person, very different from the way I remember being at her age. While we do not live an ideal, it is perfection in it's own messy way. I believe that it is beginning to chase some of those ghosts from my head.