I went with my mom and my sister to Dream Dinners last night to redeem the gift certificate I received for Christmas. I haven’t eaten any of the meals yet, but if they are really impressive, I will let you know. While I had a perfectly pleasant experience mixing up my ziplock bags of frozen food, I left feeling a bit disappointed.
I had this flash of insight standing there with my mother and my sister: I realized that I have virtually nothing in common with either of them. After almost 32 years, you would think I would have come to terms with these facts of life by now, but it still suprises me sometimes.
Both my mom and my sister are extremely kind, loving, good people. We have good relationships, I think. I help them when I can. They help me when they can. We aren’t especially disfunctional in any way.
But.
If we weren’t related, we would have no reason to talk to one another.
On so many levels, we just have nothing in common. Our interests, our personalities, our hopes and dreams, none of them are remotely similar. I think they look at me and feel…puzzled. I guess I wish I had a mother or a sister who shared my taste in clothing, or movies, or traveling or politics or reading, or ANYTHING. I just wish we connected somewhere deeper.
I wonder if it was always this way between me and my mother: that we have always felt like strangers under the surface. I wonder if my girls will grow up to feel that way about me?
Maybe it is crazy, but when M was born, I had this unmistakeable feeling that she was a soul I knew and we had been together before. I felt nothing about L when I saw her picture. But when I held her and she clicked right into place. I thought “Oh, it’s YOU! I have been missing you and I didn’t even know it.”
I hate to think that one day I will look at them or they will look at me and feel a void.
at the party on sunday i distinctly remember having to continually remind myself that your sister was your sister. you just seem so…different.
i don’t so much have this problem with my mom & my sister, but i do have it with some really old school friends. we get together and i just have nothing in common with them. i feel like they all look at me and think i’m from some other planet. obviously, it’s more disconcerting with family, but i’ve known these girls since 7th grade…
i think because we generally surround ourselves with people who share *something* in common with us, it feels really odd to be around people that we just can’t identify with at all.
I’m a lurker coming out of the woodwork to comment. (Hopefully I won’t go down in flames !) I have this same exact feeling ALL THE TIME. They are good, kind-hearted people. We care for each other and are there for one another when needed. Yet, I constantly find myself sitting at family gatherings looking around thinking, “who the hell ARE these people?” This goes for mother, father, and brother. The ONLY thing I have in common with these folks is DNA.
It constantly makes me question the whole nature-nurture concept. I share DNA with them (nature) AND was raised by them (nurture) yet there’s no mutual connection. There’s got to be a third category! You do bring up an interesting idea though. You described the feelings you had when you “met” M and L. I wonder what your mother would say if you asked her to describe her feelings about when she “met” you. I think I might ask my mother that very question. Thanks for the thought provoking post.
I connect with my children but what you discribe is inded a great fear..
I feel exactly the same way about my mother. It really saddens me and the fear of my children feeling the same away about me is very real. But I just can’t believe it.
There is a third category–researchers call it the “nonshared environment.” That is, even if you were raised by the same parents in the same house, NO ONE ever has the exact same experience. Birth order, gender, temperament, whether you look like beloved Aunt Jane or despised Uncle Joe–all these play a role. Also, in the case of siblings, there’s usually a push to carve out one’s own territory. This is very useful for kids so they don’ t have to compete with each other (I always wonder about sibs that are highly competitive in the same field, like the Williams sisters in tennis).
I actually touched on this subject briefly in my last blog post. My brother and I have somewhat different feelings about our father because of the fact that my brother was born into a different “era” in our home than I was. It’s interesting. I also feel I share little to nothing with my brother (though I like him and love him) except for the fact that we are both very driven people. But we drove in two completely different directions in our professional and personal lives. It is weird.
Sadly, I have very little, if any, connection with my mother. I find myself trying to do everything with my daughters that my mother did NOT do – like, creating annual traditions, talking with them about their hopes and dreams (and fears) at night before bed, spending quality time with them. I don’t remember doing this with my son. I fear I was too young and immature a mother and now he is an adult and we have little in common, except for our love for one another. This makes me sad. With my oldest daughter, I feel such a strong connection, on so many levels. I actually see so much of myself in her when I was young. With my youngest daughter, her personality is just starting to emerge so it will be interesting to see if my connection with her is just as strong.
This really scares me too. My family is actually pretty close, we see each other regularly and I really like my sisters. I think one thing, for us, was watching my mother grow ill and die. An experience like that can obviously destroy relationships, but in our case it brought us together. But why? What were the variables? I have no idea.
My immediate family (my husband and daughter) are so close now, it’s hard to imagine that would change. But, who knows. I try to remember that we only have the present moment, and lots of things I’ve worried about never came to pass. (Platitudes, maybe, but helpful ones for me.)
My brother and I are at two seperate ends as well. When it’s just he and I at the dinner table at my parent’s house we look at each other blankley trying to find a sentence to say. I’m sure he has the same thoughts as I do- “we were raised by the same people?” I’s sure that when my parents die we will likely never see each other again. It should bother me, but it doesn’t.
“I hate to think that one day I will look at them or they will look at me and feel a void.”
So true.
No-speaking as someone who has experienced that sense of surprise about ten years longer than you-it never really goes away. Love my sisters dearly, very proud of them, very little to converse about. With my mother, it’s a little weirder. We’re very close. I think I connect with a part of her that she sent underground a long time ago-but, well, I just spent 3 weeks with her in China, so I am feeling very aware of the shortcomings in our connection. I do think some of that is because I look so much like my father and have a lot of his independent personality, and it scares her.
Re my daughter-no connection with the picture-in person I instantly felt like I have known her all my life-can’t imagine that ever changing in any way. ~lmc
I feel exactly the same way about my mom and I can’t believe it happens to other people too. I mean, my mom is lovely. She’s a wonderful person and everything and I love her in the way a child is expected to love a parent but if we weren’t related, there is no way I would ever get along with her. Our relationship improved so much when she moved 6000 miles away but everytime one of us visits the other, the screaming matches start. Her family used to make me feel guilty that we could only get along when she’s far away, but I think we’ve come to terms that we need distance to maintain our relationship.
My family is so disfunctional, I probably don’t have much to add. But I will say that my friend swears by Dream Dinners. Someone gave us one when we had the twins (frozen, to thaw when we wanted). It was good.