She was everything to us. Everything we had came from her. Her love was the air we breathed, the food we ate, the clothes we wore, the beds we slept in. She gave us each other for the times she couldn’t be there, took away the violence our father threatened even before I ever felt it. Her blue eyes were a sea of love, her laughter a song.

When did it change? We asked her to marry and she did. “Mama, get married today!” we sang as we danced on the coffee table. What did we know? We thought she needed someone to love, someone to take care of her the way she took care of us. Who told us that? Were we so attuned to cultural norms at three and five years old?

I think now she would have been better off raising us by herself. She became miserable with her new husband, who used her as his beard. She must have realized her mistake early on but could not imagine a way out. She grew fat and sad. Her temper shortened. She lashed out at us. When I wet my bed or kept a messy room she lost her temper.

The day she hit me with my hairbrush because my closet was a mess, I didn’t know who she was anymore. She seemed not to know me. Her rage was deeper than a messy closet. Whose mother was this?

Sixty-some years later, my daughter is raising her daughter as a single mother. Her child has a father she sees every week on schedule. It is what they call an amicable divorce. My daughter is patient with her almost two-year-old as we were patient with her. We didn’t always understand her childhood tantrums but her father and I were her constant, her true north. After a meltdown, when she was dry-eyed again, we would ask, “Sweetheart, what was that about? Can you tell us what was wrong?” 

Once, she famously replied, “Oh Daddy, sometimes I’m a happy girl and sometimes I’m a fussy girl!”

The tantrums eased with maturity. Her daughter is just beginning. At 18 months, she has strong feelings about many things, including when she needs a diaper change or whether to get in her car seat.

Patience always wins, sometimes with a small bribe. I have learned to fill the bathroom sink with bath toys and water as she stands on the green footstool while I change her diaper. Her Mama is always ready with a desirable snack for car trips.

Nap time was never a problem until this week when I needed to write a column while she slept. She steadfastly refused until I finally put her in the car seat and drove. She was down like a felled tree within moments but I haven’t yet found a way to write while driving.

My mother loved being a grandparent. She didn’t have to worry about her grandchildren being fed or housed or loved. She loved them as she loved us before life got too hard for her. I think she would have embraced my daughter’s choice to be a single parent, just as we do.

Changing your life, admitting mistakes is not easy. But when it comes to raising children, what makes you happy will usually make them happy, especially in the long run.