Three decades of motherly lessons

MAXINE COHEN

I just got back from San Francisco, where I spent the weekend with my

oldest daughter. Nearly three decades ago, on my 25th birthday, I

went into labor and gave birth the following morning.

My little girl came beautifully packaged. People would stop me on

the street to tell me how pretty she was, but she was anything but

easy. In fact, had there been a return policy, there were certainly

times when I’d have brought her back for a full refund. In the end

though, she has turned out to be life’s gift to me, rather than just

my 25th birthday present.

Carolyn was a difficult child. She was emotional and

temperamental. Her moods shifted quickly but she did not change gears

readily. She had a particular little way of seeing things and was not

easily swayed. Mostly, she threw tantrums. And to make matters worse,

she was fearless -- or at least way less afraid of things than I was.

At the time, I thought that was a consequence of attention-deficit

disorder -- that she could never see how bad her course of action was

going to turn out until the catastrophe was upon her. Today, I know

it’s just part of her genetic makeup.

Try parenting a kid whose fear signals are always on green, never

yellow or, heaven forbid, red when every fiber of your body is

screaming “Look out -- danger!”

Truth be told, I was a difficult parent. I’m an only child and she

was my firstborn. It was like getting hit by a bomb. Try this --

kaboom! Try that -- kaboom! Nothing worked. I didn’t know what to do

to settle her down and I didn’t have a clue what attunement was all

about.

I only knew that I was trying as hard as I could to get it right

(whatever that means) and to keep her on the right path (as defined

by me) and from blowing herself up. With the 20/20 sight that looking

back confers, a big part of the problem was that it was all my way. I

had yet to learn that good parenting means you allow your children to

create their own life in their own little ways, just so long as they

keep life and limb together and safe in the process.

That was then, a long time ago, and this is now. And at the

beginning of this year, Carolyn moved into her own living space.

Since San Francisco is so expensive, she could afford only a teacup

of an apartment, or so she said. I imagined I would walk in the door

this weekend and trip over her bed, trying to get into the room, but

it wasn’t at all like that.

She has two good-sized rooms, adorned in her own shabby chic mode,

a hodge-podge of styles and pieces put together in an

ever-so-aesthetically pleasing way. The floor in one room slants up

and in the other it slants down, which is not really a problem unless

you’re drunk or have a major hangover.

I didn’t want to be a tourist. Window shopping is just too boring

so we did together the things she needed to get done. The major event

of the day was a trip to Pets Unlimited, a private animal shelter.

Carolyn wants to adopt a cat and she’d already gone there and found

one she liked. She wanted to show her to me. Her name was Shelby and

she seemed like a nice little cat, only the shelter worker informed

us that she had been there for 7 of her 9 years and that she has to

be sedated to be groomed every six months because she refuses to

groom herself.

OK, things are not looking so good. I could foresee that this cat

was going to be a major expense and I was wondering how she was going

to adjust, if at all, to a new environment, given the only home she

has ever known is that one small room. Carolyn, true to form, was way

less concerned than I was, but to her credit, she was not ignoring

the facts altogether.

Oh no, let’s not go there again.

I gently suggested that maybe we wanted to go take a look at

another shelter. I got a good response and off we went. The San

Francisco Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is like a

palace. Many of the rooms housing the cats are bigger than my

bathrooms. No joke! The volunteer told us they had 69 cats that were

available for adoption.

Carolyn looked overwhelmed at that but we started the rounds

anyway. By the time we hit hallway No. 3, we’d seen probably 15 cats.

We stepped into the hallway and Carolyn burst into tears. Sobbing and

laughing at the same time, she was distressed at deserting poor

Shelby, who’d never be adopted by anyone else given that she hadn’t

been chosen in all these years.

Twenty years ago, had this happened, I would have thought she’d

lost her mind. I probably would have been critical. I might have told

her not to be silly, that it was not such a big deal, to just pull it

together and let’s get on with it. Not sensitive to, nor

understanding how she was feeling and what this meant to her.

But that was in another lifetime, a lifetime before the “mothering

of Carolyn.” For this child has pushed me, kicking and screaming,

into becoming the person I already was and am today. I’m no dope. I

knew very clearly that we were a misfit and that my style of

parenting was not working. And my heart was sick about it. And

somehow out of all the pain and tumult, I found a way out for both of

us. I learned to listen and to see. I learned to feel my way into her

world, to empathize, and to understand what was true for her in the

only way I could -- through sheer love of this child. I learned to be

attuned.

Standing there in the hallway with cats meowing on all sides, I

put my arms around her and let her sob. And I said, “Let’s go. We

don’t have to do this. Shelby’s your cat. It doesn’t have to make

sense. It makes emotional sense.”

At that, she pulled herself together and said she wanted to see

the other cats. Golly, what a little bit of attunement can do.

I decided this proof of positive parenting would make for a good

column and began to write after I got home. I was snapped out of my

writer’s daze when the phone rang. I answered it. It was Carolyn.

“Gee, you sound odd,” she said. “You OK?”

“Yup. Sure am. Just writing about you and the weekend,” I said.

“I love you, too,” she replied.

Attunement.

Happy, happy Mother’s Day to me!

* MAXINE COHEN is a Corona del Mar resident and a marriage and

family therapist practicing in Newport Beach. She can be reached at

[email protected].