the bond that will bring us together.

when i was much younger, the experience of having my period was usually one met with dread. it wasn't uncommon for me to be calling my mom from the front office at my high school, saying that i needed to go home sick. stranger still was that fact that, on several occasions, she'd wind up staying home sick, too.
ah, the magic of syncing up, right?
that time of the month where you and your mom are both feeling tender and bloated and crampy to the point at which the only medicine is to go home, crawl into mom's waterbed, and watch crappy daytime tv. where, the whole week before, you were both pmsing so badly that you were fighting like cats and dogs and your dad had to sit down with you individually and calm you both down so that you could finally be civil to each other.
funny that, after going through something that awful, a week later, there i'd be, needing my mom, and she'd be right there for me.

i have to admit, though at the time i was feeling miserable, it wasn't all that bad, having a mom whose period-having experience was so similar to mine. though at first it was certainly strange, we eventually learned how to bond over it. we'd never really had much in common before, at least not to that point, and this was something my dad clearly wasn't going to understand. in fact, i would say that this was the first time in my life where she was all i had. given that i'd never looked very much like her when i was a kid and our interests were SO completely different, it was a welcome change, finally having a point of reference with her. i was so obviously my father's daughter that a large part of me worried. worried about . . . when am i going to belong to my mom? and then, there it was. and it was like all the things about her that i didn't understand before started making sense because i'd finally started going through them all, too.

when i moved away for college, i recall discovering very quickly just how much i'd come to rely on her and just how similar we are; she really did know what it was i was going through, and she really did understand. funny how all those, "you just don't understand!" speeches were so easily invalidated as soon as i was no longer at home. in fact, it was quite the opposite. she always seemed to know just the right thing to say when i might be going through a difficult time. she knew that i was struggling with discovering myself and becoming a woman, and i could tell that she was very proud of me for trying my hardest to take it on full-force. but i don't think she necessarily knows that it was because of those times when i was still living at home when i would know that she was experiencing the exact same thing i was that really made me feel that lasting connection with her. it was in those times that, without realizing it, she and i were both truly at the mercy of our womanhood. how fortunate that, in those times, we could rely on each other as we did.

as we've grown closer over the years and i've gradually mellowed out, the average length of our phone calls has increased at a fairly steady rate. it's practically impossible for us to speak without at least an hour disappearing as if it was nothing. i call tell her pretty much everything, and she seems to be on the same page. we laugh and cry and . . . yeah, all that mother daughter stuff . . . and i know why. see, there's no doubt in my mind that, all those times in high school, she and i in that warm bed, watching rosie o'donnell and giggling like little girls while waiting for the crampiness to subside is exactly what brought me to my relationship with her today. those were the times when we couldn't be anything but ourselves, and i learned that she's the reason i'm silly and nerdy and weird . . . in the best ways possible. and so, i feel terribly lucky to be able to call her one of my very best friends. because now i really do see myself refelcted in her.

i guess that means that i'm finally my mother's daughter, too.

~e.