Meanderings About the Daughter and Other Complexities

I can picture her now, riding her bike to see us at the little St. Clements apartment we'd rented. Her thick dark hair is pulled back and a magenta scarf sets off her pale and luminous skin, and I think, though I am certainly not objective, that she is beautiful. But there's something fierce about her too. She says what she thinks and isn't gentle with me.

And I try too hard. It's a far and extravagant journey we have taken just to see her, and there's a lot of accumulated love and curiosity and yearning to be expressed and fulfilled in a short space of time. It puts pressure on us, I realize that.

She's busy. She has just started a PhD program and she's excited about it, but it's demanding. She carries a heavy bag over her shoulders, and in every spare moment, she pulls out a book, or an article, or her laptop, and I see her reading and taking notes with that familiar intensity she has demonstrated since childhood. I don't dare interrupt.

And she's worried about money, of which she has almost none. Also, she just finished writing a book, which will be out before Christmas, a pretty impressive accomplishment, but not without its strains and stresses.And we're planning a trip, a quick, easy dash to Berlin, which is wonderful and worthwhile, but of course doesn't turn out to be particularly quick or easy, and actually amps up the pressure even more. (Travel is stressful...had you noticed?)

And she's young, and facing all the usual questions and challenges that arise, all the insecurities and uncertainties of youth, all the issues of decision and destiny that seem to beg for immediate answers even while such answers are impossible.I think she thinks I wouldn't understand.As for me, I am very much not young. And what pressures I feel are certainly real to me but perhaps to others abstract and luxurious. I am looking here at my life's last good season, trying to make meaning and avert the sense of bitterness and regret that seems so easy for older people to fall into. I don't want to be so focused on the train that left the station that I fail to notice how lovely is the town at which I am stopped.

Oh, I can see that I am silly at times, good for a laugh but near enough to my expiration date to veer towards pathetic. And I can see how I am a little like the idle rich but without the money, and disturbingly Prufrock-ian. I can even see how someone might lose patience with me. Why don't I just write, or take a class, or volunteer, or start a full-fledged garden? Why don't I just savor the present and make that my art?

Partly because I'm haunted and it bogs me down. Just the other day I overheard a woman talking about her recovery from kidney donor surgery, and I was shocked by the unexpected surge of nausea I felt as painful memories rushed over me. Two siblings with kidney disease, their lives cruelly abbreviated, and here I am with two kidneys, browsing in a shop. Classic survivor guilt. Get over it.

That's just one personal example.

But we all have our burdens, and all of us suffer. That much I have learned. I guess the trick is to keep the suffering from spreading like a cancer, negating even the beautiful things, which is not an easy task. A Pakistani girl was shot for going to school while I was looking at rainbows in the highlands of Scotland. Sometimes I don't know how to reconcile the different realities. The world is fraught with incongruous and incompatible facts.

My friend Mr. Harbor, at 92, says he doesn't know what he believes, really. It all comes down to questions, even now. But when a shadow of remorse falls visibly over him, I want to touch his hand and tell him he must stop. Even without having known him very long, I am certain he did the best he could with what he was given, and I know it wasn't easy, because life never is. But isn't it also wonderful?

Maybe I want to tell my daughter something like that, too. But it always comes out wrong, ill-timed, too emotional, or worse...kind of goofy and inappropriate. "Inappropriate" is a word she has applied to me more than once.

But she's helping me to see myself more objectively. For example, I zig-zag when I walk. This is because I notice things all over the place and bounce around like a pinball, swerving erratically and unpredictably, which is good to know because it makes it hard for people who want to walk with me, and it might even be a metaphor for how I approach life.

And speaking of noticing things, I apparently report on oddities and wonders that are not odd or wondrous at all. "Mom," she tells me, "I know you've traveled and done a lot of things, but I don't think you realize what a rare world you live in now. It's a very small world, and there's nothing typical about it, and a lot of the stuff that surprises you when you step outside is really not that unusual."

Here's something I find extraordinary. My daughter swims. More than that, she swims regularly, and it's become essential to her. Even in Berlin, she ventured out with swimsuit, cap, and goggles to do laps in pools in vintage pre-war buildings.

And I cannot say for sure, but I imagine it is how she renews herself, emerging calmer and quieter, tired but also strong and self-contained. It's her own sacred time.Maybe this, too, is an ordinary thing, but it amazes me, and it makes me proud. I never did learn to swim. I never learned so many things that my daughter does and does well. This belongs to her...yes, I realize that...but maybe it's indicative too of something I did right, even if accidentally.

What is it that I want from her? I don't even know, but I try too hard to get it. I suppose I want some tenderness, some acknowledgement, some love expressed.

But these are implicit, and trying to tear them out into the open as I do is, well...maybe inappropriate? I embarrass her. I say things that needn't be said and expect her to do the same.

On a particularly rushed and harrowed travel day, at the airport in Berlin, she snaps at me. I don't even remember the details, but she blames me for something, most unfairly, and I feel wronged and hurt. A door inside of me clicks shut and I decide that from this point on, I will remain cool and reserved with her. I sit beside her on a bench beneath the clock and the board of arrivals and departures and say nothing. I won't go back for more abuse. Ever.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she says, and it's like magic how I melt. "I get stressed. It's not your fault."

Oh my God. Not my fault. Not my fault. My heart opens up and fills with gratitude and all of it wants to spill out, but I just say, "It's okay."

I don't even add how much I love her, because she probably knows, and I sense that this is one of those situations where I should just tread lightly and not take it over the top. I contain myself.

A few days later, back in Oxford, I take her out to buy her new shoes, which she desperately needs. It's such a mother-daughter thing, and I am giddy with it. But within minutes it is clear that this is an errand, not a leisurely outing, and she's eager to get back to the library and conspicuously irritated by everything. There's a spark here that would be all too easy to ignite.

So I try to rise above it. I try to be as a mother should...patient, calm, understanding. I try my hand at dignity and restraint, and I don't take her annoyance personally because it suddenly seems clear that she is worried and hurried and it has nothing to do with me. I focus on how bravely she is taking on new challenges, how daunting it must seem, how spirited she is. I remember that she is 25 years old.

And oh, the joy I feel when I see her in her new shoes! It's a goofy, silly, irrational kind of joy, but it's joy nonetheless. I wisely keep it to myself.

Over dinner one evening, I confide how much I wish that I could dance. (Dancing is another thing I never learned to do.) "I just don't know how to move," I say. "I wouldn't even know what to do with my hands."

"Mom," she tells me, in an almost maternal way, "You just get out there and flail. You certainly know how to flail."

And I do.I've been flailing for years, and will likely continue.