Being a mother

When I think of everything I have done, I realize that mothering was the most difficult. It began as the most beautiful experience — having babies, taking care of them, laughing and tickling and teaching values — until the day they hit puberty. That marks the onset of trauma both for parent and child. It is natural to be traumatized at this time. Puberty marks the beginning of growing into an adult. Part of it is separating from parents. So now, you and your child begin to have serious fights.

Puberty is when I learned to sleep without air-conditioning. I caught a daughter escaping to the disco every night and coming home at four so she couldn’t get up to go to school on time. Now she and her sisters were facing suspension, but she didn’t care. I cared. I turned off my air-conditioner so I could hear everything going on. To this day, I am grateful to her for teaching me to sleep without air-conditioning. It saves me a lot of money.

I remember sitting with the high school principal who looked at me with some pity. “Hold on until she’s 15,” the principal said, “then she will improve. That’s the way it is with girls who begin puberty at 11 or 12. Boys hit it later, when they’re 14 or 15. With them you have to wait until 18.”

It was the best advice I received. Then I knew it was really difficult to bring up adolescents. You plunge into an area of total confusion and you don’t know what will happen next or what you will do next. You just pray everyone gets through. Luckily, each family has a quota of one problem child. You only deal with that one. The others are a lot easier. Maybe because you learn from the first problem child.

Through the years after puberty, you are still a mother, more or less, until finally they get married and move away from you. I am a liberal mother who believes in independent children. Through the years we’ve only had one must: You must have Christmas lunch with me. All the other occasions are dependent on whether they are free or not. I have no mandatory Sunday lunches, no mandatory holidays. My children can see me when they want to, and if they don’t want to, it’s cool.

Now the children are all grown. One lives in San Francisco, hardly sends e-mail but she is 45, a full adult. I think I was the same with my mother when I hit my 40s. Another lives in England, also very quiet but sends the loveliest cards on my birthday. Another lives here — we are the most communicative but not really. I mean, I don’t see her every week or call her every day. All my daughters are in their 40s and my son will be 38 this year. I am the mother of full-grown adults.

Sometimes before I sleep I remember the fun we used to have together and I smile. I miss their baby days but now we are too old. Maybe I will wait for my first great-grandchild. My oldest grandson is going on 24. Maybe that will happen sooner than expected.

Now I mother other people. I have friends young enough to be my daughters. I am knitting a onesie for a friend’s first baby. I knitted a little dress for Bubu, the little baby at the Salcedo Market. I enjoy my life. My children and I are dependent of each other yet we love each other very much still and that to me is the sum of motherhood.

I write this for all young mothers out there. You have a role to play in your children’s lives. You have to teach them how to live independently, not to rely on you completely. I received a strange text asking me about natural remedies because a 13-year-old was forgetful and she wanted to give her natural remedy. I said I thought she should try counseling. There is probably a natural conflict between mother and child, otherwise why be so forgetful at 13? She didn’t believe in counseling. But I have more experience in mothering. I knew where her problem lay.

Women out there who are mothers, you have an obligation to give your children their lives while you get a life of your own so when the children hit their stride, you have other things to do and will be happy, too, so you don’t insist that they take care of you or that they come and have lunch with you every Sunday. Set them free and watch them fly. That to me is the secret to successful motherhood. It’s pretty hard to achieve I know but we have got to do it. That’s why we are mothers.