My mother and I had a complicated relationship as a result of my father's victimizationion of each of us (and my siblings), and other factors. During my pregnancy we found new common ground and much had healed, so for a few years we happily and effectively co-parented, and I have a great son to show how far that healing had gone.

She had one saying though that I never got to tell her had been extremely hurtful. She'd say, as she saw me dishing up a bowl from the end of the pot, "I can tell YOU'VE never been hungry!"

In fact I had, and often during the years she'd been the responsible adult who was supposed to be sure I WASN'T hungry. This painfully echoes in my mind every time I scrape out a pot now, but I do that less and less. Because the sensible thing for a poor person to do with the dry leaving in a pot is to add things to make soup, which I do often, and which she never learned to do.

I think now that her saying was a Depression-era holdover she'd heard from her own inadequate, politely alcoholic mother.

So we overcome, generation by generation, doing the best we can to improve on the ways we were raised.

~S~