Julep: On mothers and daughters

For Christmas this year, I gave J-Mama a book club: a list of books for the two of us to read and discuss over the course of the year. We had our first meeting at the Panera Bread on Saturday morning. I liked the book, and I really liked hearing her perspective.

I realized this weekend how lucky I am that I have had so many years to get to know my mother as an adult - and I want to spend as much time with her as I can. When my mom was my age, she still had 25 more years of time with her own mother. I hope I am going to have that much time with J-Mama. I was always pretty close to my mom, but I treasure her now in a way that I never did before. I don't know whether that is because I have become a mother myself and I realize how much of her guidance I am going to need to bring this child to a happy, healthy, high-functioning adulthood - why wasn't I taking better notes when she was raising me right? - or because J-Mama's health prospects have become precarious with the whole Parkinsonian thing.

I think you girls are aware that we are back on the list with the adoption agency. I would love to have a girl, and Mr. J is pulling for another boy, so we are leaving this up to fate. Of course I don't know for sure - since I didn't even grow up with a brother - but I can't help but think that the mother-daughter connection is something that just isn't the same with sons. Do y'all know the old line "A son is a son 'til he takes a wife, but a daughter's a daughter all of her life"? Maybe I only think that is true because my family has always been kind of a matriarchy. I still miss my grandmama, and I know that J-Mama misses her too. In the years before Grandmama moved north to the assisted living, after she stopped driving and was getting elderly, J-Mama went to visit her every day. She has told me so many times how glad she was they had that time together.

J-Mama told me last month - after years of saying that she would never retire, she'd work until she died - that she talked to her financial advisor and she thinks she will retire in three years, at 62. She figures she will stay busy by picking my kids up after school every day. May we all be so lucky that her plan comes to fruition.