August 12, 2025. 93 degrees.
I wrote this two Junes ago.
My mother didn’t seem afraid of much. Then again, maybe she was afraid of everything. She certainly feared rejection. Certainly she feared a few of my father’s moods. Dying. She could snap and crackle with leonine brassiness easily mistaken for confidence. She bossed people around, refused to seek out permission for things. Again, looked like confidence and maybe it was. Inside, I know she often yearned to be accepted and loved and felt that she wasn’t. Or at least, not enough. That’s a wound that competes with confidence.
But don’t get me wrong. (Don’t get me wrong is a thing I might’ve said to her as I equivocated in true middle-child fashion, a stance easily mistaken for the absence of confidence).
Don’t get me wrong: a sure hand informed a lot of her life. Design: boom she had it. That indefinable thing we call taste. Instincts: bam. She trusted her gut. She trusted her gut and couldn’t understand why I didn’t. She could read people and was often right about them in a way that made me temporarily hate her.
She knew how to teach. She knew how to teach those with talent spilling out of their pockets. She knew how to see talent in those who kept it under lock and key. She knew how to teach troublemakers and nerds alike. It made her powerful in a certain realm, beloved, even. Yes, she was beloved in the art room, but not the teachers’ lounge where her constant smoking bothered some and her guttural smoker’s laugh was often laced with contempt.
In spite of a certain penchant for being stubborn and opinionated like my mother, I am more my father’s daughter. I share his love of solitude, his appreciation for an argument well-made. For most of my life, he was an atheist. I consider myself agnostic.
He’d been an altar boy growing up in Queens. His mother had swished her nylon-encased stout legs to Mass every morning. I remember the rosary beads dangling from her hands. You’d think after growing up like that it might have been a bigger deal giving it up but it didn’t seem that way. When my father stopped going to Mass, it was as if he took off an ill-fitting jacket and let it drop to the floor. Shrug. That was it.
He elevated science. The planets in their travels, for instance, were elegant and enduring symbols of a different kind of holiness. He bought a telescope and showed us kids Jupiter’s red spot, the moon’s shadowy craters. Mathematics satisfied him too. How many times in helping me with advanced algebra did he say, “let X equal” and how predictably did I groan because I got that part and wanted him to go faster. But no. Math is nothing if not taking things in order.
His sacraments? Walking through the woods. Fishing.
He didn’t understand why I cared so much about what other people thought, which was maybe his way of saying: trust yourself, trust your thoughts, your perceptions. Trust your ability to walk away from things.
My mother said, You worry too much. I didn’t think I worried too much. I thought I didn’t worry precisely enough. Imagine worrying about your worry.
My father left early. My mother did too, but 14 years later. One son met her, neither son met him.
Yesterday, a guest on a news program reminded me a little of my father – clear blue eyes, aquiline nose, a slight spray of freckles. I happened to be sitting with my brother and said so. He shrugged. Oh come on I insisted put glasses on him and you’d see it.
Nobody in my family really resembles anyone else. Or not for long anyway. My sister and I perhaps sounded alike but that’s it. My maternal grandfather mistook me for his middle daughter right before his death, but I was ten and changed a lot afterwards. My brother got that same grandfather’s nose, but no one got my father’s long, narrow one or my mother’s underbite.
It’s funny how that goes. When one of my boys was younger he could go in a flash from looking like his own father to resembling mine. Now he is only his own self, which of course is the best way to be.
All this talk of parents and children can’t help but make me feel urgent about time. How little perhaps is left.
I see your mom flash all over your face, Dee. Hear her in your and B’s wit and voices. I Remember your dad only fleetingly. I am one of the lucky ones who had your mom for art every year but one between 7th and 12th grades and reveled in her company as a New England adult as well. As an art student I was midland at best, but as a craftsperson I found confidence in her sunlight. It informs me to this day. And She once directly gave me, so generously, precisely what my mother could not, and I hold on mightily to that gift.
Hi Lisa. I had no idea you saw my mother in my face! I don’t know if you know this but Mom majored in home ec and nutrition at Pratt. In many ways, you were like a daughter to her.
What a gorgeous piece, Dee–the writing, of course, but also getting to know your family and your connections to one another. I’m so grateful to have had a chance to read this.
Thanks so much.
Your writing gets to the heart of family, parents, etc. I wonder how many of us feel that we resemble one parent more than the other and then realize as we reach and go beyond their ages, that we truly are a mix of both. I will be 78 next month, outliving both of my parents in age. I was 30 when my Dad died and 32 when my Mom died. In all of those years, I have often paused to consider how my upbringing has made me who I am. What has been a revelation to me is that while I was always closer to my Dad and most like him.,(as first born, Mom had such strict expectations for me), I have found that the older I get, there are parts of me so like my Mom. She was fearful, at times, of so many things but equally had such a zest for life, enjoying celebrations, family and friends, good food, music and above all, dancing. I like to think that I have my Dad’s quiet strength at times, equally with my Mom’s often zest for life. Until your writing here Dee, I had not considered that and this consideration has made me feel in a sense, complete.
You are so right to suggest that we embody both of our parents. I could write another set of paragraphs on the ways I’m like my mother. Impatient, creative, one who gets the big picture.
I had no idea you’d lost your parents so young. That’s really young. I was 26 when my dad died and 39 when my mother died (I was eight months pregnant with my second son at the time). For the longest while I was the only person in my circle who had lost both parents. It changes you.
Oh also: my mother and I share being fierce advocates for our children.
Dee~ oh I love this…as you know I’ve been lost in old photos lately. Plus, last night almost every single person in my dreams – and there were many – were passed on or just gone from my life. Interesting.
Anyway, I saw your smile in your mom’s right away and the similarities in the post and in your comment to Marti, all ring true (of what I know of you).
What a treasure to have Lisa here to remind you of your mom in the world. My mom, also a beloved teacher…but no one to share those stories with me. Except once, may years ago, when one of those remembering type posts came up and I got to read what a few of her former students thought. What a gift.
I can often see my mom on me…and at times, my birth father too, from photos…but he left when I was 10 months old, so it will only be known how the leaving impacted me, but not anything of shared traits.
Funny how so very different each person & family are.
Great post!
Thanks Nancy. I am lucky to hear present day recollections of my mother & Lisa’s not the only one.
By the way, I thought of you while watching the two-part HBO documentary about Billy Joel — the vintage clips from California (not THAT old, but still) made me think of your Mom and her descriptions of LA back in the day.
In part 2, they explore how wounded Billy Joel was by his father’s absence from his life, so there’s another point of resonance. Portrayed: a really poignant example of trans-generational trauma. (His father went back to Vienna. Joel’s grandfather’s lucrative textile company had been taken over by Nazi’s).
Do you think your dreams are being brought on by the old photos? Do they feel like dreams? Or visitations?
Mmmm…don’t know. I think more dreams, but I could be wrong. My dreams tend to be complicated and movie-like (plots, locations…) and stem straight from ‘something’ or another in my daily life.
They don’t make for restful sleep. Ha.
Fascinating learning more about your family and how they shaped you by what you appreciated (more so maybe in later years and even after they were gone—pretty common I think) and what you disdained or resisted. I remember when your mom died during with pregnancy with Danny. Poignant is only one way to describe it.
Doris
Well and with Ken in the hospital recovering from an emergency appendectomy, you were my stand in spouse!