My Mother/My Self [antikvár]

AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENTSIn 1973, I picked up a book that correlated women's orgasmic potential with the degree of security they once had with their fathers. I can remember the day, where I was sitting, the weight of the volume in my hands, and my instantaneous reaction: what about mother?I had just written a book on women's sexual fantasies. It left no doubts in my mind where repression or sexual acceptance begins. Who first takes our hand away from our genitals, who implants pleasure or inhibition about our bodies, who lays down The Rules and with her own life, gives us an indelible model? That week I wrote an outline for a book entitled "Mothers and Daughters: The First Lie."I thought myself a good candidate for this subject because although I would have told you I loved my mother, I also felt sufficient psychological space between us, a separation that would allow me to be fair and objective. As if any woman could. It took two years of research to get beyond the anger in that first title. Even to recognize how angry I was.My intention was to do a series of interviews with mothers and daughters within a family, and where possible, with grandmothers too. In these last four years, I interviewed more than two hundred women across the United States. Most were mothers. AU were daughters. On the most meaningful level, they were experts. But I quickly learned that a book of interviews would not be enough.I had hoped to avoid the subjective through findingMlChapter 1 MOTHER LOVEI have always lied to my mother. And she to me. How young was I vs'hen I learned her language, to call things by other names? Five, fouryounger? Her denial of whatever she could not tell me, that her mother could not tell her, and about which society enjoined us both to keep silent, distorts our relationship still.Sometimes I try to imagine a little scene that could have helped us both. In her kind, warm, shy, and self-deprecating way, mother calls me into the bedroom where she sleeps alone. She is no more than twenty-five. I am perhaps six. Putting her hands (which her father told her always to keep hidden because they were "large and unattractive") on my shoulders, she looks me right through my steel-rimmed spectacles: "Nancy, you know I'm not really good at this mothering business," she says. "You're a lovely child, the fault is not with you. But motherhood doesn't come easily to me. So when I don't seem like other people's mothers, try to understand that it isn't because I don't love you. I do. But I'm confused myself. There are some things I know about. I'll teach them to you. The other stuffsex and all thatwell, I just can't discuss them with you because I'm not sure where they fit into my own life. We'll try to find other people, other women who can talk to you and fill the gaps. You can't expect me to be all the mother you need. I feel closer to your age in some ways than I do my mother's. I don't feel that serene, divine, earth-mother certamty you're supposed to that she felt. I am unsure how to raise you. But you are intelligent