Mommy Issues in paris

by Isabella Castelo

Bonjour! This week I was in the city of lights, Paris. Even better…my parents came to visit me. It was more like their 30th wedding anniversary and I happened to be around but…I still found a way to make it about me.

Paris itself was beautiful; the celebration of my parents' eternal love was also beautiful, but what I really hyper-fixated on this week was my position as “daughter.” More specifically, my mother’s daughter. I’m not very good at it, to be honest. It’s not that I’m one of those brats that treat their moms like shit and are disgustingly ungrateful. In fact, I respect and love my mom more than anyone in the world. I think that is what makes me so bad at being a daughter. I am crippled by the idea of saying those things to her face. I’ve always thought about this (maybe every minute of every day but that’s not important right now) but in Paris, it really hit me in the face.

We were riding the metro and our immediate surroundings were filled with mother-daughter duos, at all stages of life too. It started with a young mother and her toddler, she held her daughter and kissed her on the cheek for no reason other than her existence. Then, there was a school-age child with her mother who giggled and looked each other in the eyes. The next step in the timeline was me and my mom. We stood next to each other but didn’t speak or touch, not because we didn’t want to but because we had no idea what to say. I watched these other pairs and couldn’t find the point in time when it gets so hard to talk to our moms. Did it happen all at once? I don’t remember.

On one hand, this makes me feel really sad, the realization that my relationship with my mom will never be the same as when I was a child who knew nothing other than that she loved her mom. On the other hand, it really emphasized the complexity of that, oh so special, mother-daughter relationship. It’s very different in every stage of life, but in every stage, the two of us are connected in a way unlike anything else.

During my lifetime I wasn’t the only one who grew up, my mom was once that young mother who didn’t really know anything about motherhood other than that she loved her kids. Now, 20 years later, we’re standing next to each other surrounded by a whole bunch of daughters. I had such an extreme urge to say something at that moment and could weirdly feel that my mom felt the same. Who knew if she actually did though, or what I even wanted to say, but I just wanted to say something, acknowledge what was going on. Maybe I said it in this entry.

Before this, I dreaded thinking about our relationship and where it was going, but now I have a newfound appreciation for the uncertainty of being a daughter. I know that I will always love my mom more than anyone, and this love will manifest in different ways in different stages of my life. Growing up with her is one of the most rewarding parts of my life, and something I think only a daughter could understand.

Love,

Isabella

Photograph: Pinterest

Mommy Issues in Paris