Q: Mothering is a complex topic fraught with so many aspects and adjuncts. What was the impetus for writing this type of book?
A: Obsession is the impetus for most books, and this was no exception. The last gift my mother gave me was a beautiful black wool scarf with pastel embroidery – quite striking and gorgeous – that she’d bought from a holiday vendor at the assisted living place where she lived at the end of her life. I wore it for many years over the neck of my winter coat, and got compliments on it all the time, and was always asked where I got it. It was always hard to answer, both because I couldn’t direct anyone to a store, and because it came from my mother, with whom I’d had distant and fraught relationship.
After she died, I became silently obsessed with the scarf, and went into a panic when I thought I’d lost it. For years, I thought about what the scarf meant to me – that it kept me warm, that it stood for my mother, that we’d had this distant relationship. After a lifetime of not feeling close to her, I felt an intense attachment to the scarf. I eventually wondered if other women had such a gift from their mothers, a gift that opened the door to the whole relationship. I started asking writers, and the result has just been published.
Q: How would you describe your mother and your relationship to her?
A: For starters, see above. My mother was a sweet, loving, talented woman who had a difficult marriage and ended up having a very hard life. I wanted to keep my distance from her and her troubles, and I wanted to be a dutiful daughter. It was not an easy balance to strike.
Q: What was the most surprising thing you learned from (doing) this book?
Not everyone had an unhappy mother! I say this somewhat facetiously, but to me this was the sharpest divide in the essays – between the happy and the unhappy mothers. Others will probably see other differences. I also learned that even for the women with the most difficult stories – those whose mothers were sick or died young or had unusual hardships – the process of writing the essay was transformative. Focusing on the important gift became a way to hold the sadness in a different, lighter way. Of course, there are many pieces in the book about happy mothers and daughters – and it was wonderful to read these.
Q: What common theme or experience do you think these women share?
A: This is probably self-evident, but we all share the overwhelming intensity of feelings for the mother – good, bad, and in between. For those who had difficult relationships, and whose mothers are gone, there is a wonderful generosity and understanding.
Q: How did you choose the writers?
A: I wanted writers who are accomplished essayists, even if they are known as poets or reporters. I wanted a variety of ages, experiences and cultures. I wanted a mix of fiction writers, journalists, and poets, and a few women who are not primarily writers, including Reverend Lillian Daniel.
Q: How did the writers feel about being asked? How did they feel about writing the essays?
A: I asked a number of people who declined, saying that their relationships with their mothers were too complicated. The people who accepted only said yes because they were moved to do it. I can’t speak for all of them, but a good number said the essays were very meaningful for them. Mary Gordon at first declined, because her mother had never given her anything but cash as a present, even as a small child. But about a month later, she remembered an event that she saw as a gift – and wrote a wonderful essay about that. Katha Pollitt wrote an essay that I know was painful for her, but when it was published in ELLE, shortly before the book came out, she was very happy because many people read it who don’t usually read her political essays. Mary Morris’ mother died shortly before the book came out, just as she was turning 100. Mary was moved to have been able to acknowledge her mother that way before she died.
Q: Would you ever consider a follow-up book for women who did not have good experiences with their mother and/or didn’t learn many positive traits about motherhood?
A: There’s quite a mix in the anthology now of people with good mother experiences and those with more trying experiences, so I’m not sure a separate book is necessary!
Q: As midlife mothers, the issue of motherhood and being a mother is sometimes “worn” differently than with our younger counterparts. While we have more patience, compassion and measure, we also have less time left to make a difference in our children’s lives, and to see them blossom and grow. What would you say to this group?
A: I became a stand-in mother to my niece Julia after her adoptive mother, my sister-in-law, died four years ago. She adopted Julia from China as a single mother when she was in her mid-40s. What I say is based on this experience, not on a lifetime of study or research, so please take it with a grain of salt. As important as the individual family is, it’s also important to expose the child to lots of other people who care about him/her and can look after children if it becomes necessary: aunts, uncles, best friends. Give the child a big world, not just the nuclear family, since that’s very fragile.
Q: How is your relationship with your own daughter? Does this book hold value for her?
A: When my niece Julia she saw her name on the dedication page of the new book, she said, “I’m going to cry.” I knew it meant a lot to her, and that meant a lot to me. My grown step-daughter Emily, whose name is also on that page, was visibly touched. I cherish my closeness to both of these young women, and I can’t wait for them to read the book.
Q: What one message do you hope the reader will have “gotten?”
A: Hard to pick one, so I’ll go with three. 1. Almost all the gifts people wrote about were modest. At the simplest level, the expensive gift may not be the most “valuable” gift. 2. The meaning of a gift shifts over time. 3. Contributor Roxana Robinson’s mother said that every child should have his or her “heart’s desire.” Roxana was given a horse – the subject of her essay. That’s a lovely ideal – even though it’s not always possible.
Elizabeth Benedict is the author of five novels, including the bestseller Almost, and the National Book Award finalist, Slow Dancing, as well as the classic writer’s guide, The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers. She is the editor of two anthologies, the just-published What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most (Algonquin, original paperback- http://whatmymothergaveme.tumblr.com), and Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives.
Elizabeth has published fiction and nonfiction widely, taught creative writing for more than 20 years at Princeton, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and elsewhere, and teaches every summer at the NY State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore. She helps students with college and graduate school application essays through her company, http://www.DontSweatTheEssay.comShe tweets at @ElizBenedict and can be found @ http://www.elizabethbenedict.com