Vicki Larson's OMG Chronicles

This Mother’s Day, I’m working with Clever Girls in support of Macy’s Heart of Haiti  to shine a light on the “trade, not aid” program, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans struggling to rebuild their lives and support their families after the 2010 earthquake.

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My mother liked to give advice. Well, it was more than that. She seemed to live to give advice. Just like she believed that there wasn’t a twist tie or plastic bag that didn’t need to be kept for some sort of an emergency, there wasn’t a topic in my life that didn’t need to be commented upon.

I loved my mother but this part of her I did not particularly love.

“Mom, if I want your advice, I’ll ask for it, OK?” 

“I’m entitled to my opinion,” she’d sniff.

“And I’m entitled to ask you to keep your opinion to yourself.”

“You’re still my child.”

“But I no longer am a child!”

“Just wait — when your kids get older you’ll do the same,” she responded somewhat smugly.

“No, I won’t because I’ll remember how it made me feel.”

“Trust me; you will.”

And so it went for years.

When I was younger, I rejected her commentary (with all the obligatory eye rolls and tongue clicks) mostly out of adolescent rebellion — “You can’t tell me what to do!” Anyway, I thought at the time, how could I take advice from a woman who set the table using paper napkins she’d split in half and then reused, thus always having a ready supply of somewhat soiled paper products? (Although, in truth, she said she was only doing her eco-part after listening to my hippie-driven teenaged “Save the Earth!” rants; was she blaming this odd behavior on me?)

When I became an adult, a wife and a mother myself, her advice seemed dated; she was from another generation, one in which women didn’t have many choices (even though my mother had a successful career and even became a marital renegade by turning her marriage into a LAT, live alone together).

Plus, every parenting book I read as my kids became adolescents themselves talked about the changing role of a parent — you become less of a manager and more of a consultant. Why didn’t she get that memo?!

When I divorced at midlife, my mother and I began to have conversations we’d never had before — not just mother to daughter, but woman to woman, wife to wife, mother to mother. We talked about her marriage, her own experience of motherhood, the dreams and hopes she gave up; we became closer than we had ever been. Her advice seemed somewhat more tolerable, perhaps because I began to feel great compassion for her. Still, I secretly hoped that she would just stop.

And then, in December 2010, she died. It was sudden — she had made it through her second heart surgery and we were preparing to bring her home to rehab and rebuild her strength. We all know our parents are going to leave us one day; we’re just never really quite prepared for it when it happens.

Years ago, I had been complaining to my dearest friend about my mother’s incessant advice. One day, after her own mother had passed away after living with dementia for many years, she looked at me and said, “I wish I still had a mother to give me advice.”

Now, I know what she means.

• Does your mother still give you advice?
• If so, is it wanted or not?

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Thank you to Macy’s Heart of Haiti for sponsoring my participation in this “Share Your Heart” promotion. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own.