Leaving my mother and marrying my husband did not free me of her words, nor her way of thinking and perceiving myself and the world. It, in fact. strengthened the critic within me.
Fed, clothed and nurtured by my mother and her harsh words, the inner critic, was my connection to my mother. Painful as it could be, I embraced the inner critic, not knowing what I was doing.
I was going to be the perfect wife. With my husband away much of the time for work I adopted a fifties attitude towards housework. I even ironed permanent press shirt. I began to sew, trying out intricate patterns by Vogue.
My mother vehemently avoided patterns made by Vogue, saying they were too difficult and required too much time to understand and involved too many small pieces to sew. Not for me.
By the time we moved to California some ten years into our marriage, I had begun making my own patterns.
During those early years back in Boston, and before I gave birth to our eldest daughter, now twenty-six years old, I began preparing dishes for the Christmas Day meal that first week of December.
I made cold terrines, cakes that could be frozen, meats that could be seasoned and stored in the freezer. I kept busy. Like my mother.
And like her I too, began to feed the inner critic’s need to keep me seeking to improve, to become better, at what, I do not know–everything in life, I suppose.
And then I became pregnant with our first child, a daughter.
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