‘Dear Mum…’ Let­ters inspired by Lady Bird

Among the many virtues of Gre­ta Gerwig’s charm­ing and inci­sive debut fea­ture, Lady Bird, is the way it depicts moth­er-daugh­ter rela­tion­ships – with warmth, humour and unflinch­ing hon­esty. Saoirse Ronan’s epony­mous teen rou­tine­ly clash­es with her moth­er, as played by Lau­rie Met­calf, yet they also share moments of sin­cere affec­tion. To cel­e­brate the film’s release, we asked four of our reg­u­lar female con­trib­u­tors to write a short let­ter to their own mother…

Dear Mum,

Remem­ber the day I moved to Man­ches­ter? I can’t remem­ber the weath­er, only that it was Sep­tem­ber, and by the time you’d helped me unpack my things it was get­ting dark out­side. I felt weird when you left, impa­tient for my new life to start. Lat­er, you told me that you’d cried in the car on the way home.

I’ve been think­ing about all the times we’ve left each oth­er. You, leav­ing me on the first day of school (me, sob­bing so hard in protest that the school called you to come and col­lect me). Me, leav­ing you to go and study in the States for six months, glid­ing up the esca­la­tor at the air­port – the image play­ing as a reversed ver­sion of Gre­ta Ger­wig descend­ing an esca­la­tor to greet her par­ents in Frances Ha in my head. You, leav­ing me in Lon­don to live with peo­ple I didn’t yet know. Me, leav­ing you after Christ­mas and wish­ing I could stay a lit­tle longer.

In Lady Bird, Lady Bird’s moth­er Mar­i­on seems unboth­ered by her bel­liger­ent, beloved daughter’s col­lege depar­ture. She doesn’t even get out of the car to say good­bye. But as she laps the park­ing lot, her face crum­ples into an ugly cry. I thought of you while watch­ing this scene, and I cried too.

I’ve always under­stood love as the abil­i­ty to see anoth­er per­son as leg­i­ble, but watch­ing Lady Bird and Mar­i­on, I was remind­ed of how hard it can be to read your own fam­i­ly. We’re bet­ter at trans­lat­ing each oth­er these days, but I’m still bad at leav­ing you.

Let me know when you’ve watched the film and if you cried too?

Love,
Sim­ran

—

Dear Mum,

Today I met Dad for cof­fee in a lit­tle Lebanese place in Fins­bury Park. We talked about how he is mov­ing on from you while still lov­ing you. He talked about how you didn’t go to uni­ver­si­ty in the usu­al way. You took night class­es and that’s how you got a degree. He asked if I remem­bered being on a fam­i­ly hol­i­day in Barcelona. He said you almost didn’t have the con­fi­dence to apply for a Russ­ian lec­tur­er job. On that hol­i­day the dead­line was fast approach­ing and he was egging you on to apply. Final­ly you did and then… ​“of course, she got the job,” he said in a voice rich with pride.

That sto­ry made me feel at home.

I am relieved to know that my hes­i­tance over my abil­i­ties is not a freak thing. It’s some­thing you knew. I didn’t appre­ci­ate your emo­tion­al rich­ness while you were alive. When I was mak­ing your life hell because I was locked in my own defen­sive spi­ral of ado­les­cent unhap­pi­ness, you were jug­gling so much. I remem­ber watch­ing you apply­ing eye­lin­er in the mir­ror of the house where dad still lives. Your face was tense and tight, with con­cen­tra­tion but also with sad­ness. You looked so glum as you left me – a mess – to go to work, where you also had stress from colleagues.

I can’t bear how lit­tle patience I had for your suf­fer­ing then. If any­thing, it infu­ri­at­ed me. I was the one with prob­lems. You, an adult, were sup­posed to have your emo­tions togeth­er and tidy, but you were expan­sive in your sor­row like the great Russ­ian authors whose books lined your study. I had an eat­ing dis­or­der, and it ate you up. You felt so guilty. You left your inbox open and I read the emails that you sent to your best friend in Moscow. Your laments about me felt like a knife twist­ing in my already unsta­ble guts.

In ret­ro­spect, I’m glad that you had some­body to talk too. (Lena’s chil­dren were mak­ing her suf­fer so the pair of you com­mis­er­at­ed.) The mem­o­rable stuff in our rela­tion­ship was the intense clash­ing, but there were lighter, more ten­der times too, when your dry sense of humour man­aged to tick­le me, and of course, lat­er, once you were diag­nosed with breast can­cer I realised how much I stood to lose.

Now, look­ing back, I see how sim­i­lar we are. Dad and Kieron have a sto­icism while my emo­tions bub­ble up at the most unhelp­ful times. I fight it less and less, and accept rag­ing bursts of feel­ing as our shared cur­ren­cy. I don’t have to miss you when you course through my blood.

Love,
Sophie

—

Dear Mom,

The hard­est part of grow­ing up has been com­ing to terms with how shit­ty I was as a teenag­er, espe­cial­ly to you. Sure, hor­mones are par­tial­ly to blame, but in real­i­ty… I had a pret­ty good idea that I was being self­ish. It was always eas­i­er for me to tar­get you as just ​“mom” rather than a fleshed out and com­pli­cat­ed per­son try­ing to do their best.

It’s only recent­ly that it real­ly dawned on me that being an adult is not some mag­i­cal state of being that affords you spe­cial knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence. That, just because you are thir­ty or forty, it doesn’t mean that you have your life togeth­er any more than some­one who is 15. You nev­er had to raise a teenag­er before me and it must have sucked, but you nev­er made me feel like you didn’t have it com­plete­ly under con­trol. Know­ing that you prob­a­bly had doubts and you were prob­a­bly hurt by how I act­ed only gives me more respect for you. If you were afraid, it didn’t show. You made rais­ing us seem as nat­ur­al as breath­ing, more than just some­thing prac­ticed but some­thing writ­ten in your DNA.

I don’t know if I’ve ever met anoth­er per­son who has worked so hard at being the best the best ver­sion of them­selves. I look at the way you live, and I am proud of how you push your­self to be more open, to be more healthy and to be the best you can. Most peo­ple won’t even admit to them­selves that they are capa­ble of change or being bet­ter ver­sions of them­selves and ever since I can remem­ber, you’ve always pushed your­self to live the best pos­si­ble life you could.

What I hope you know is that I love you more than any­one in this world. I think of you all the time, and if I were to look back at my life, I don’t know if there is any­thing you could have done dif­fer­ent­ly to have been a bet­ter moth­er. You’ve worked hard so that oth­er peo­ple could be hap­py, and I hope that in spite of hard­ships you are most­ly hap­py too.

I’m sor­ry that I can be dis­tant. I don’t want you to ever think I don’t want to spend time with you. It’s weird to admit, but I get a bit scared feel­ing that you love me so much. It’s not some­thing I am good at deal­ing with in gen­er­al, and as much as it hurts me that I could ever con­tribute to your lone­li­ness, I’m still tak­ing the easy way out. Even fac­ing it down like this, I can’t even promise to be bet­ter because I’m not sure I can.

I just hope you know I love you and I will always love you,

Your daugh­ter,
Jus­tine

—

Dear Mum,

There’s not an awful lot I remem­ber about our rela­tion­ship dur­ing the 2005 – 2010 peri­od, but I think that’s large­ly because there’s not a lot I remem­ber about that time full stop. I hat­ed being a teenage girl. I didn’t go to school, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. It was, all things con­sid­ered, A Bad Time. We both know that I’ve gone to great lengths to for­get the unique brand of hor­mon­al malaise and inden­tured depres­sion which over­shad­owed that peri­od. I tried every­thing I could think of to shrug that bur­den off my back but always found it bar­relling straight back down the metaphor­i­cal hill of life to crush me all over again. You used to tell me it gets eas­i­er, and I’d scream ​“When?!”

In time I got so used to the weight, I’d for­get I was car­ry­ing it at all. I start­ed to say ​“Something’s wrong with me,” for­get­ting that a) I was a teenage girl, so intrin­si­cal­ly there was stormy weath­er con­stant­ly on the hori­zon, and b) A chem­i­cal imbal­ance is not a char­ac­ter flaw. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less, of course, as it hurt when Dad walked out, as it hurt when we were broke, as it hurt when I thought I’d be stuck in the town I hat­ed for­ev­er. I still don’t buy the idea there’s noth­ing wrong with me, but I’m slow­ly com­ing to terms with the notion that it’s the ​‘wrong’ bits which make peo­ple inter­est­ing in the first place.

I spent many years in the curi­ous ado­les­cent lim­bo of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly want­i­ng to be both extra­or­di­nary and ordi­nary, caught between a push-pull of ​‘stand out’ and ​‘fit in’. I was frus­trat­ed that no one ​‘got’ me. I think that’s why I turned to films, the nat­ur­al medi­um of the out­sider. When I think about being a teenag­er, I think about hurt­ing, but I also think about oth­er things too. Like lis­ten­ing to Radio 2 in the car when you drove me to psy­chi­atric appoint­ments. Like the numer­ous times you came to pick me up because I’d passed out at someone’s house par­ty which you didn’t know I was at in the first place (sor­ry about that). Like going to the library on a Fri­day after­noon to rent a DVD for the week­end. I realised some­time lat­er that you weren’t watch­ing because you loved movies (you don’t) – you were watch­ing them because you loved spend­ing time with me.

You always believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and you always said ​“I have to, I’m your mum”, as if a sense of duty is all that com­pels a per­son to act so self­less­ly – and you real­ly were self­less, because we didn’t have much, and I know every­thing you had you gave to me. I’m exhaust­ing, and I’m not easy to love, and when I made it espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult, you nev­er stopped try­ing. Even when I was being a lit­tle shit (which I sus­pect was most of the time).

We both know it’s not always easy, it’s nev­er going to be easy. But thanks, at the very least, for teach­ing me if you keep going, even­tu­al­ly you might be able to laugh about things. And in the end, laugh­ing about our own mor­tal­i­ty, and mar­vel­ling at what tiny, insignif­i­cant specks of star­dust we real­ly are, is the best any of us can real­ly hope for. I’m hap­py with that.

Love your petu­lant, trou­ble­some, trou­bled, and eter­nal­ly grate­ful (eldest) daughter,

Han­nah