Perfect Day

I'd like to spend it with you

Such a perfect day… Lou Reed’s Perfect Day has been ricocheting through my mind the last few days, and I welcome it. It’s cheering me. Each time the phrase “perfect day” forms itself in my consciousness, I stop and ponder. Is it a perfect day?

Every day is a perfect day since my daughter reached out, since contact was re-established.

I’m not supposed to get too excited about it.

I must modulate and moderate my emotions. Emotional regulation, you know. My friend S., who is a therapist, said to take it easy. Stay cool. Stay calm. Be serene. Be open. Don’t extend too far. Make small moves. Let her respond. Don’t overwhelm her.

It’s like she’s a frightened deer.

I’m a frightened deer too, for God’s sake.

Trust has to be re-built, on both sides, evidently.

All the times I thought I was being helpful, I evidently was not.

Someone posted on Substack Notes the other day, “Unsolicited advice is always criticism.”

That sobered me.

I’m constantly spewing unsolicited advice. My son says I need to manage my anxiety, and of course I do.

My son has also said, Mom, every time you “help” M. (my daughter), you’re sending the message that she can’t figure this out on her own.

My task is to let my kids do their own lives, without my advice, criticism, opinions, or meddling. Especially since I have so much I need to manage, handle, and improve in my own life. Instead of focusing on developing my own self, daring to dream my own dreams, nurturing my own growth, I obsess about “helping” others.

It’s not helpful. It’s not even help. It’s a massive distraction from my own Self and needs.

Anyway, the good news. The incredible news. The news that has had me humming and singing Lou Reed’s Perfect Day for half the week: My daughter reached out. She emailed me out of the blue. I thought her message read like a litany of complaints and criticisms, and I was stung by several lines, but my wise friend S. encouraged me to see it as beautiful, brave, open, and hopeful. She said, “She is trying to connect.”

S. encouraged me to take my time responding. When I did finally begin to respond, I got flummoxed. I found myself apologizing and feebly defending. I called S. She said, Tell her what she needs to hear from you. That you will listen, give her space, not offer advice or your opinion. That you accept her and her choices.

I never felt I rejected my daughter. But I did get frustrated and very worried about choices I saw as unwise or damaging over the last few years. I’d express this in various ways, and my daughter got quieter and quieter and essentially stopped responding. The more she stonewalled, the more frustrated and worried I became, and we spiralled badly into seriously choppy waters.

I’ve been very hurt. But, apparently, so has she.

I wrote what S. advised. I said, and it was true, radiantly true, that I understand she needs me to listen, accept, and be humble.

The truth is, I don’t know what is best for her, or for my son. I didn’t know what was best for the Iraqi Jew I fell in love with years ago and immediately tried to fix. He was trying to build intimacy. I fell for him and then went into fix-it mode, lecturing him on how to relate to his daughters, his in-laws, his past, his trauma, which he had plenty of.

One day, he said, “What’s wrong with you?”

That hurt. It was mean. I ended the relationship. I didn’t for a second try to understand what made him ask that. I didn’t for a second think about what might be “wrong” with me (though plenty is, as it is with us all).

I killed the relationship. And maybe that was okay. The question has a tinge of something I knew I didn’t want in my life.

But, it stayed with me. What is wrong with me?

It’s codependence he was identifying, and it’s weird shit. It’s trying to manage everybody and everything but myself and my own life. While I’m trying to prop everyone up, my own life limps along, falling into shambles on the regular.

I always keep it together, even if sometimes barely.

But have I ever “thrived”? Have I ever even remotely allowed myself to “follow my dreams”?

Nah. Not really.

That’s the legacy I’m leaving my kids. A parent who glibly directs her children to do this internship, write that expert, apply to this program, attend this lecture, read this book, think this way, do this thing… But does none of it for herself.

It’s time to draw my focus in. It’s time to consider what I want. How I want my “second act” to look, feel, and be. It’s exciting. It’s an opportunity.

And my kids, of course, have given me a tremendous gift in allowing me to do this. They are telling me in more ways than one that they are launched. They don’t need my managing or meddling anymore, if they ever did. Now, they need a mother who listens, accepts, and offers encouragement at the right times and in the right ways.

I need to learn these skills.

They also need—and my daughter has been telling me this for years (I just suddenly realized)—a mother who puts herself first. A mother who does the thing for herself. Who makes the decision, writes the book, takes the trip, does the thing—for herself.

Years ago, when she was still just a teenager, my daughter painted a sign to hang over my desk that said, “I will write and publish my memoir by ___” and date. She consulted me about the date. It was very liberal, very generous, something like three years away. I toiled at that desk on everything but a memoir or a book of any kind, as the date came and went, as the paper grew faded and tattered, as I eventually took it down.

I sent the improved response to M.’s email: short and sweet, attempting to say the right things, the things she needed to hear. I also told my daughter that Daisy is in her final days of life.

M. responded. I invited her to visit Daisy. I told her I’d be at a museum exhibit in the City (San Francisco) for the day, and she could come visit with Daisy. I left her a note on the table.

At the museum, I said to S., “Can I just tell you, I’m inordinately happy to know that M. is at my house today, that she is near, that she is in my neighborhood!”

S. said, Yes, that’s great. But stay calm. Don’t overwhelm her.

When I returned home, there was a note from her on the table, in response to the note I had left. She said she was shocked by Daisy’s condition and thinks I need to put her down this week. She offered to accompany me.

And she texted me a little later, re-affirming that offer. !

She also left Daisy fancy wet food and dried fish treats, which she loves.

I texted back tentatively, careful to not over-type, over-share, overwhelm. I thanked her, said it will be intense, is she sure?

She responded yes, she is sure. And then, she asked me the name of a Filipino restaurant I had taken her to once. A normal question a daughter might pose to a mother in a relatively normal relationship, in other words.

This sent me over the moon, to say the least.

It’s a perfect day. I want to spend it with… you. Her. Me. Myself. And I.