There are large swaths of my life that I don’t understand: Why I went where I did, tried to be a good girl, rebelled, failed, left home, returned, any of it. And I think it’s because I never really understood my mother.
I can tell you that, for example, I never smoked, solely because my mother did smoke. That I stole a car, while my mother bought a new Thunderbird.
That my mother asked my weight every time I visited, all the while growing to a mammoth size and probably knowing, as older women do, that one day I’d fall on the wrong side of the line.
That I designed clothes from 1950s thrift shop finds, whereas my mother worked at a fancy department store. I can’t tell you why I was driven to remodel the looks from her youth, even though I know she had two skirts to wear, one made from an army blanket.
All I know is that my mother is gone, and the hole she left is a big part of my identity.
Lo Scriviti 