[Today I’m participating in a mass blogging. WOW! Women On Writing has gathered a group of blogging buddies to write about family relationships. Why family relationships? We’re celebrating the release of Therese Walsh’s debut novel today. The Last Will of Moira Leahy (Random House, October 13, 2009), is about a mysterious journey that helps a woman learn more about herself and her twin, whom she lost when they were teenagers. Visit The Muffin to read what Therese has to say about family relationships, and view the list of all my blogging buddies. And make sure you visit Therese’s website to find out more about the author.]

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A few years ago, my mom asked me if I thought we talked enough.

“Should we be talking more than we do?” she asked. “Ruth talks to Lisa almost every day,” she added, referring to her best friend and her best friend’s daughter.

“What?” I said, buying myself some time. Then, “No. I think we talk just the right amount, Mom.”

“You do?”

Though the content of our conversation was new, the feelings it provoked in me were not. When my mom asked questions like this, questions like, “Do you love your English teacher more than me?” she didn’t want honesty. She wanted me to tell her that I loved her most of all. That she was doing everything right. That she was a good mother.

She wanted reassurance.

“Yes,” I said. “If we wanted to talk more, we would.”

“We would?”

The dialogue continued in this vein until my mom concluded that Lisa had started talking to Ruth more when she became a mother herself. I made a mental note to expect this same conversation after the birth of my first child.

During a recent trip to St. Louis to see my parents, my mom and I attended a reading (ironically organized by my dad, who works for the library). I happened to be in town with Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor, who, after co-authoring a travel memoir together, spoke at length about the mother/daughter relationship.

Though their relationship is on the ideal end of the mother/daughter spectrum, their talk was excellent. Kidd pronounced the relationship one of the most complex, citing the Greek myth of Persephone, and discussing the cyclical pattern of loss, search, and return intrinsic to the mother/daughter bond. Like Demeter, the mother is continually losing her daughter; she searches and searches for her, until finally, her daughter is returned to her, only to be lost once again.

What’s interesting to me about this myth, and about Kidd’s use of the myth to structure the book, is that the story is told from the mother’s point of view. Persephone isn’t an active participant in the tale, or the relationship. She’s stolen from her mother by Hades; her mother searches; and Persephone is returned to Demeter for a finite period of time (spring and summer).

What would the story look like from Persephone’s perspective? Perhaps her mother’s need for her is too great. Or maybe Persephone wants someone to know her, really know her, for the adult she has become. Could it be possible that she chooses to leave? That the brief period she spends with her mother every spring and summer is enough for her? That too much time, the addition of fall and winter, would only damage the relationship they both want to preserve?

Many years ago, my mom and I went alone to buy the family Christmas tree, sans dad and brother. We looked at tree after tree; my mom would point them out; I would veto them. It’s too tall, I’d say. Or, it’s too big; it won’t fit; it’ll make a mess. When we finally decided on a Douglas Fir, the man who helped us load the tree into the car laughed at us.

“It’s like a role reversal,” he said. “She’s like the mom.” He jerked his thumb in my direction. I couldn’t have been more than 13. My mom and I exchanged uncomfortable glances and feigned polite laughter.

Do we talk enough?

In the myth, the fact that Persephone is responsible for her mother’s happiness is presented as a given. A non-issue.

And yet the weight of this responsibility is enough to pull her below the earth’s surface.

It’s that heavy.

We talk just the right amount.