maternal quandry

My daughter is moving toward being a vegan. I welcome this when I consider the alternative to structuring one's life that hyper-christianity offers. I like to joke that I'm an evangelical canivore but this is not to say that I am uninformed on nutritional issues. Knowing that red meat is unhealthy, however, has not eclipsed my shameless love for good steak. Which isn't to say that diet is responsible for the distance I feel between my dear child and me. It's just a good metaphor for our relationship.

I had hoped that adulthood would find us better friends. I hoped that the comparatively short period of conflict we experienced during her college years would have mostly mended. While it doesn't wreck me as it once did, this gulf between us, it does make me sad and wary of reaching out. It's about erosion for me. About not understanding how our conversations became debating minefields (I exaggerate, but the essence is true for me). How tired I feel knowing that almost anything I say from compliment to opinion is going to be dismissed or refuted.

She would probably disagree.

P.S. After a thinking about all this, all I have to add is that she is wonderful and I miss her. It doesn't make sense because when she's here I'm not at ease...but that's just how being a mother can warp a woman.