Conversation | 04/27/2009 12:00 am

The wOw Conversation: The Ins, Outs and In Betweens of a Mother's Love

Lesley Stahl, Sheila Nevins, Jane Wagner and Mary Wells speak candidly about their love for their children, their parents love for them and what they’ve learned from it all.

With Jane Wagner, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells and Sheila Nevins

SHEILA: Do you think it’s so different with a son? Do any of you have sons?

JANE: Sheila, I recall seeing you receiving an award at an awards show, and you mentioned your son so lovingly.

SHEILA: Because I think it’s true with mothers and sons, too.

MARY: But it’s different.

SHEILA: Yes, it is different. It is different because a mother has to let go of her son in a different way than a mother has to let go of a daughter. But there’s still some of the same kind of antagonisms and, you know, passions.

LESLEY: But Sheila, if you let go they come to you. Which is pretty hard to know.

SHEILA: I think that’s really true. But it’s very hard to let go. It’s sort of like Oscar Wilde. You sort of hate the thing you love. You almost do the wrong thing with a child because you love them so much that you can’t let go. And then you let go and then they come back, and then you hold too tight. So it’s kind of like a seesaw. It’s never the right hold, so to speak. At least I found that. And if I squeeze him too tight he runs away. And then when he runs away and he comes back, there’s a moment of fineness, or goodness, or workability. And then I hold too tight again. You know, it’s like a seesaw.

And then you let go and then they come back, and then you hold too tight. So it’s kind of like a seesaw. It’s never the right hold ...

LESLEY: But it’s you? Not him?

SHEILA: Well, I think it’s a little of both. Although he’d probably say not. He’d probably kill me.

JANE: Do you think that most boys grow up wanting to please their fathers more, and wanting to make them proud? More than women want to make their mothers proud of them?

SHEILA: I think it depends on who is the stronger and who they admire the most.

MARY: Oh, I wanted to please my mother enormously because she was so good to me.

JANE: Did she understand your success and appreciate the person you became?

MARY: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. And I took her everywhere. We all went together – my daughters, my mother – you had to take us all on, because we were like a gang. But we all loved each other madly. We enjoyed each other so much.

SHEILA: Isn’t it the old thing of not wanting to let your child suffer what you suffered? So you over compensate in certain ways and under-compensate in other ways. You didn’t have any money and now you have money, and you want your kid not to worry about money. If you didn’t think you were smart, you want them to think they’re smart. You try to make up for what you missed as a child. And then sometimes other problems come from that. Maybe it’s never easy.

LESLEY: You know, we still have this struggle, if our mothers are alive.

SHEILA: Lesley, don’t you think that you love your child more than yourself?

LESLEY: Ah, yes.

SHEILA: Can you think of anybody else in your life that you love more than —

LESLEY: No.

SHEILA: OK, so herein lies the problem. I can’t imagine loving anyone more than I love my son. And I would take a bullet for him. I wouldn’t take a bullet for anybody else. I think I might, you know, run away. So I think that love is so enormous it creates all kinds of problems.

LESLEY: But it’s what you said before, Sheila, which is that we don’t understand that about our own parents.

Read more about: Children, Family, Love, Mother's Day 09, Psychology, Relationships

41 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

For the life of me, I can’t imagine ever hitting my mother but the post did remind me of the one and only time in my life I ever stopped talking to Mum for we were very close and we had never suffered the usual mother-child angst. I was a grown woman, close to forty, and we’d had a difference of opinion. Nothing, (in retrospect!) worth falling out over but she walked out of my house and my response had been "WELL! That’s that, then!" Four weeks went by without our usual daily phone conversations or any contact but…I was as stubborn as she. She lived thirty-five miles away in the city where my then seventeen year old daughter was attending college. One evening, over dinner, I had mused about Mum…daughter had asked why didn’t I just call her, go visit, get this over with and I had ranted somewhat but, at the same time, expressed some concern as to not knowing how mother was being that she was approaching seventy. Daughter paused for a few minutes then said "Grandma is okay but she misses you…and I know you miss her…" I asked how she was so sure of Mum’s feeling. Another pause…then I learned that my daughter called her grandmother every day at lunch time to check on her, see how she was and to let her know we were all well, in her youth trying to create a bridge. "And a little child shall lead us…" came to mind. Next day I called mother. I don’t have either mother or daughter now but every day I am so grateful for the bond and love we three women shared.

By Nancy Cleveland on 04/27/2009 9:09 am

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Wow. Always hard to relate to people who have healthy bonds with their mothers and their daughters. We have "legacy issues" in my family. I’m sure there’s some love tucked in there somewhere, but that’s not exactly what the women in my life have been about sharing with each other.

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…" Kahlil Gibrahn.

I’ve always taken some comfort in that idea, but when I listen to other women tell their stories, I don’t know for sure if it’s true. Maybe I missed out on something that I’ll never be able to give.

By Ms. Dee on 04/27/2009 11:06 am

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Ms. Dee … you have been quiet lately and I’ve been wondering why and "the latest" … and I read what you have written here, realizing that each relationship is different and each of us has to work out and do what we have to — and no one else can truly understand what lies within our hearts. But I have watched and listened to others who are so stirred up within and in some cases, eaten up, that it is as if they are carrying a weight like a large stone that weighs them down.

Someone has to be the one to take that first baby step — test the waters in the smallest way. It sounds like everyone has been marked, hurt, and perhaps irreparably wounded. But in life each of us needs love whether we admit it or not. . and perhaps it might take you - who I know as a strong woman - to make an initial step. So often everyone needs a good cry and then a reaching out, perhaps more than once or in a different way. Is it worth a try? Only you can decide that — but I find that if you feel you have made a first step, some of that weight is released as you have done the right thing. That alone is a positive thing, don’t you think?

Maybe not … but perhaps something to think of. In the meantime, sending you love!!! Joan

By joan larsen on 04/27/2009 11:21 pm

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Dear Joan, I’ve been giving this post of yours a lot of thought. My first thought was, "Yikes! I’ve given the wrong impression here. I don’t think of my Mother as a stone that weighs me down. It’s not that at all. It’s just, I can’t honestly say she’s been like the wind beneath my wings, either. And she knows that. We’re very close. We’re just very different.

She came to see me last week. Can you believe it? Just four months after her by-pass surgery…that practically scared the life out of me…she’s driving and running around to her exercise class, and lunch with friends, or off to watch the tap dancers. But at my house, after we looked at all the video I shot of her great-grand children, we got a bite to eat, and went to the grocery. And while we were at the store, we had a disagreement about Boaz. So before she left, I pulled out my Bible and I read the whole book of Ruth out loud…just to prove to her that, as it turned out, SHE was right!

And as she was getting into her car to leave, she smiled and said, "I had fun." And I said, "Oh, good!" But honestly, I couldn’t figure out when the "fun part" had happened. I don’t know. If either of us has a problem that needs to be baby-stepped away from, it’s probably me. She just never seems to be having fun when she’s with me. If other people are around, she lightens up quite a bit, but when it’s just the two of us, it’s all worrisome and significant. She’s not my friend, she’s my mother. And I’m not just anybody, I’m her daughter. Gravitas! That’s what it is with us. Problem-solving, chewing the serious fat. It IS meaningful and it IS significant, and altogether precious to me; but it’s not that carefree, gigglesome get-together so many other people describe when they spend time with their mothers…or with their children.

That’s the real troublesome part. Why is it so hard for me to have any fun with my own adult children? I can have fun with my grand-daughters, and I remember having a lot of fun with their parents when they were little, but somewhere along the line, this weird distance just creeps up, like some genetic wall. I can’t really let my hair down, or forget what’s expected of me. And any sort of intimacy seems totally taboo…even though, I always come away thinking of things I wish I’d said, or opportunities missed. It’s odd. ’Course, there’s been a lot of pain in my family…suffered and inflicted…but that’s all been sobbled out, talked to death and laid to rest. And I’m not sure it’s any worse than other families suffer and inflict on each other.

Maybe I’m just stuck on an ideal that doesn’t really exist. Maybe I just don’t know how to have fun. Or maybe every family has a melody, or a compositional style about it, that’s beautiful in its own right. It’s like I’m Rachmaninoff wondering what it would be like to be John Phillip Sousa. (Now whouldn’t that would be silly.) But you’re very sweet to send your love. And to the extent that I’m capable, I’m sending you mine.

By Ms. Dee on 05/06/2009 10:57 pm

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Good to "voice" (how appropriate) the things wondered about and so often held in, getting the thoughts of others, and finding that others feel just like you. Just saw this — it is godawful late — but this is food for thought. And then — well, you know so well that once I get inside this, you will be hearing. In the meantime, hugs.

By joan larsen on 05/07/2009 3:11 am

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This is for Dee: Once, as an young adult, I watched a female friend of mine interact with her Mother. They were sitting together on a couch, I was sitting across from them. All during our conversation the mother was stroking her daughter’s hair, or touching her arms, being very loving in a physical way. I remember feeling a deep sense of envy and sadness. My Mother would never have displayed her love and affection that way. ( My father always did). When I had my own children I was very physically demonstrative, although having sons, that lasted only until it wasn’t really appropriate. It took me years to understand that it just wasn’t in my Mother’s nature to display those kinds of feelings. There is no ideal, Dee, it is what it is. I think what you said about each family having their own compositional style is perfect.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 05/09/2009 12:19 pm

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I had a similar experience, except that in my scenario, the mother in the conversation became emotional while telling me a story. She started to tear up, and her daughter, in her late teens, jumped out of her chair and was at her mother’s side in a heartbeat. And as I sat there watching this daughter comfort her mother, I thought about all the times my own daughter had seen me cry…or caught me crying…and if she didn’t leave the room immediately, I did. I honestly can’t tell you the last time I saw my own mother shed a tear. But I have very vivid memories of my own daughter, telling me a story, and starting to cry, and how I sat on the other side of the room and listened to her story until she regained her composure. I don’t feel good about that at this point. Why didn’t I….move! Hold her hand. Anything! Did I think there was something for her to gain by my letting her find her way through it by herself?

I don’t know what creates these family differences, but I do remember how impressed I was that afternoon by how different things could be.

By Ms. Dee on 05/09/2009 2:04 pm

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How to we learn how to mother? How do we learn how to trust? It begins at the knee of the care taker, the care giver. You, given your relations with your mother, learned and digested the ways of mothering, the ways of parenting. Somehow we have been led to believe, as you said before, in the ideal family situation, the ideal mother who would, as the Wow moms said, would take a bullet for their child––BUT there are many variations on that theme and the music isn’t so grand. So, yes, why didn’t you move, hold her hand, anything? Maybe, and I’m just throwing this out, your hand wasn’t being held by YOUR mother when you so needed a hand to hold. We tend to replicate, replicate, replicate! The fact that you wish it had been otherwise might spur you to take your daughter into your arms and tell her so. Break the patterns, if you can. And believe me, I know how difficult it can be, but the part of you that can laugh, giggle, have fun with your grandchildren tells you a lot, doesn’t it?

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 05/09/2009 5:42 pm

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I think it’s with my grandchildren because I don’t feel like I’ve made any big mistakes with any of them yet. I’m not around enough. So I can just bring and give and feel fairly confident that they’re going to enjoy my company. But I must confess, I was very glad to be home. I could feel myself needing the distance toward the end of the visit. And these are delightful children, every one of them. I was just spent. I could feel it. It was all I could do to not fall asleep in a room full of grown-up…not that these particular grown-ups would have noticed. They were busy on the video games you see. But if a kid had come in the room they would’ve noticed, I’m sure. But I swear, if they’d said, "Gramama’s asleep!" the grown-ups (my sons) wouldn’t have heard it…until the third or fourth time…. and I’d have sat there with my eyes closed and pretend I hadn’t heard it either. Ha! That never happened, but I know myself. I was so tired. I can see myself doing it.

I do remember my mother hugging me when she cried. We were alone in the house after my dad left the second time. One time, we were holding onto each so tight when she sobbed, I felt her pain reverberating through my skull forever after that night. It colored everything. I mean, he’d left me just like he’d left her, so there was nothing I could do. But, that’s just little stroll through my shrink-dom.

Last December, after her by-pass, when they brought her up out of ICU, she looked me dead in the eye and said, "I shouldn’t have done this." And I did take her hand at that point, even though she was glaring at me like a wet hornet, and shrugged and smiled and said, "Well, we’ll never do it again. How’s that?" And she smirked and rolled her eyes. MAJOR relief. Sometimes when I say things in an effort to be helpful, she’s very quick to tell me how wrong I am. But this time, a little humor went a long way. Now she laughs when she tells people how I promised to let her die next time.

But I do wish my daughter were closer. If she’d let me, I’d do just what you’re saying and wrap her up so tight some of her pain would have to spill into me. She’s having a tough time right now, fighting her own demons. Who knows what got into her skull with a mom like me. I’m sure there’s some great stuff in there, but we’ve agreed for now, if I were there, I’d "just be in the way." Maybe I should go prover her wrong.

Isn’t Joan’s video the best? I sent it to my daughter. "Roar with me, not at me!"

By Ms. Dee on 05/09/2009 7:42 pm

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Many typos. Please forgive.

By Ms. Dee on 05/09/2009 7:45 pm

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My mother and I loved each other dearly, Phyll, but I don’t ever recall hugging her once in my life. Yet, she was the person I loved and admired most.

By James the Game on 05/10/2009 9:19 am

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Joan: That wonderful video that you sent me would be a perfect metaphor for a child (in this case a young cub) finding his own voice with the help of his mother always there for him, but standing in the background to help, defend, and comfort when need be. We need to raise our children to be independent and stress the importance of incorporating the policeman inside instead of out. Mothers and daughters, sons and mothers, the stuff of life and each story is different in its unique way. Below is a poem by Phyllis Janowitz that caught my attention years ago:

CATCH

Scuba diving in the green murk

of Fiddler’s Creek, our siblings

enjoy the bliss of fishes, cavorting.

Are they not the same species:

Gregory, Polly, Holly, and the holy

mackerel? Water babies all, and each

one dives to trawl a bigger finny

traveller with tinnier scales.

How Mother will adore whichever

offspring has the biggest haul!

She can fry it for supper.

This frolicsome lurching and

mauling, does it begin at birth?

At first, no one is hurt.

Later on, the sport is extended

to shark, barracuda, stingray;

leaky yachts sail the waters off

Key West, Florida, and the sun

breaks down tender tissue.

It is only after years of exhortation,

"Take an umbrella, stay below, swab

the decks," with the last sentence

nearly through, Mother whispers

"Who’s hooked now?" wiping pink

foam from her lips.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 05/09/2009 11:58 am

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Hi Phyllis … the video does fit with this subject and it is wonderful. How about putting the website for this video on for all WOW people - in a prominent spot if you can so everyone should see it? And - as always, Phyllis, your selection of poems or your own are so perfect and add a dimension to WOW that we wouldn’t have without you. A million thanks!

By joan larsen on 05/09/2009 1:25 pm