My Daughter Will Be an Awesome Mom
By: Avalina Robin Harvey
Tags: Motherhood, Motherhood Feminism, Personal Essay, Daughters

My Daughter Will Be an Awesome Mom

I know she’ll learn from my every mistake.

Every few weeks, I am treated to a blended step-family dinner. Usually, some combination of my ex, his new wife, my step-son, his partner, my son and my daughter attend.

This week my daughter and I shared with the family what it was like to take part in the recent women’s march. My daughter has matured into a strong feminist woman. Sometimes, I don’t know how much of that is due to, or in spite of, me. I wonder if I have been a good enough mother.

Ruled by my gut

My head holds one of those overthinking, obsessive, technically giant IQ brains. Yet I’m ruled by my gut and my overly flawed heart and am prone to overreaction. Or, as my daughter would call it, the need to “chill the fuck out.” (She gave me a yoga mat for Christmas and that is what she wrote on the card.)

I have to admit I have made my fair share (and maybe even more) of parental screw-ups. One was the day my then 17-year-old daughter went to the dentist to get her wisdom teeth removed. The whole drama led to an embarrassing scene. The aftermath was horrible.

My daughter has always been strong and feisty. At age less than age two, when she got mad, she would literally pee on the floor to show her displeasure. By high school, she was an honor student and a gifted performer. Unlike me at that age, she was very popular and gregarious. By 17, she’d performed in theatre, loved to wail on the jazz sax and, for a time, was the lead singer in a rock band. She was also more stubborn than I ever was (or so I say) and that is no mean feat. To be succinct: she won’t take shit from anybody.

Yet, on what I have come to rue as the “the horrible root canal mother failure day” her behavior shocked me.

A pounding heart

I’d already been waiting for about two hours and was a bit frantic because no one had come out to say the supposedly hour-long surgery was going well. When the nurse came out with a concerned look on her face, my heart began to pound. My crazy mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario: my daughter was going into anaphylactic shock, had a bad reaction to the IV sedation, or they’d missed a tooth and hit an artery and she was bleeding to death right in the dentists’ chair. (You can see now how I need to learn to chill, yes?) You name it, I thought about it.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Trembling, I walked back to the dental surgery room. And there was my ballsy chick now a blubbering, weeping mess. The freak out started when they tried to give my daughter IV sedation. The nurse could not get the IV inserted into her veins. The nurse had been trying on and off for more than an hour. And my by now fed up, furious daughter would not let anyone get that needle near her.

In the past, I’d joked about how my princess still needed her mommy to hold her hand (and nearly squeeze the life out of it) when she had a blood test. So, initially, I was relieved that she was upset. I thought, okay, this is just more of the same “can’t deal with needles” schtick.

Bad mothering

So I offered my hand for crushing and started making soothing mom sounds, even singing softly. My daughter agreed to another attempt with the needle. Then things got crazier. I could see the nurse was mad and maybe not being as gentle as she could have been. To get the whole thing over with quickly, I gave up on supportive-mom mode and switched to no-nonsense mom mode.

“You just get yourself under control,” I snapped. “Breathe. Now, slowly, in and out.”

This was met with instant adolescent fury, more sobs and hysteria. Now, numerous folks’ life schedules had been arranged to facilitate this tooth-extracting event. In fact, it was being performed at my still hysterical daughter’s bequest, not mine. I wanted her to wait a bit longer to see if her wisdom teeth would eventually erupt normally, recalling how bad it was after her brother got his out.

So we decided to zonk her out with laughing gas. Finally, she drifted off. The worst was over, I thought. Well no, it was not. Because every time my daughter caught on that the IV needle was nearing her arm, she roused herself out of the laughing gas stupor and started sobbing hysterically once more.

Then the dentist called me outside the room. My daughter was so worked up, even with IV sedation (should they get some into her) she was too unstable to handle the work, he said. They would have to book her for a tooth pull under general sedation. But, he cautioned, she must show up early and get a dose of a major tranquilizer before they would even consider starting. Even a general anesthetic requires an IV. I walked my daughter out through the waiting room, shaken to my core.

A burst of temper

I had acted sympathetic and supportive inside the office, but once outside I was angry with my daughter. On the drive home, my temper burst and I blasted her.

She let me have it back and more. I got the full teenaged diatribe. I was the worst mother in the world, the cause of every ill that had ever befallen her. She was sick of all my shit, she said, and then she told me she hated me and to go F… myself.

I told her if I was such a bad parent and causing her so much distress, she could get out. Go live with her dad or on her own because I did not care. I left home at 16 so she could leave now, too.

The ensuing row lasted all the drive home. Finally, when we got inside I told her to go to her room or else. She slammed her bedroom door and I threw one of my shoes at it. Times like those, I want God to sew my wicked, wicked mouth shut and paralyze my arms.

By the next morning after a fitful night of non-sleep, I knew I’d been a bad, bad mother. You see, before this trip to the dentist, my daughter had just broken up with her first real boyfriend. They had been inseparable for more than two years. She was dying of a broken heart and too stubborn to give into the tears she needed to cry.

And I think that is what riled me the most and pushed me to become Mommy Dearest, if am honest. Because it took me most of my adult years to stop letting men wreak havoc on my life. I was terrified my daughter would turn out like me. If I had not been triggered by so much of my own internal drama, I would have known in that dentist’s office the loss of her first love was the real reason my daughter could not cope. She was topped up on anxiety to start with and had no overflow valve to endure any more pain.

I had failed her. I had forgotten one of my life rules: everyone is entitled to at least a six-week grace period during which they are free to be a basket case — no questions asked — after a serious break-up.

Apology time

As soon as she would talk to me, I told my daughter how sorry I was. I told her I was wrong and I loved her. I hope she heard it. But I think it was likely filed in the “if she ever goes into therapy, my ears will start burning,” memory drawer.

I knew full well my daughter would never act out or go on a self-destructive tear the way I would have at her age. She was strong and sensible. And I had given her no shoulder to cry on. No warm arms to catch her when she needed to fall apart. To this day, I wish I had not been so self-centered and blind. My daughter deserved better mothering.

At least I know one day she is going to make an awesome mom. Especially when I remember the mountain of the mothering mistakes I gave her, from which I know she’ll learn.