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A review by readsewknit
What We Carry: A Memoir by Maya Shanbhag Lang
5.0
I wish I did a better job tracking who recommends which titles. Somehow someone spoke highly enough of this for me to place it on hold, but by the time it was my turn for it, I'd forgotten where it had originated from. I had a long drive recently, and this audiobook was the perfect length to accompany me.
I resonated with this memoir on multiple levels. Maya speaks lovingly of her mother's involvement growing up and support through college, as well as changes that appear in her mother as Maya herself becomes a parent; later her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Through her own adulthood, Maya is forced to reexamine her experiences and reassess what the reality was with her parents growing up.
For those who don't have a traditional experience of two loving, involved parents happily married, there is a lot to connect to. My mother has depression and schizophrenia, so the feelings and experiences Maya would share were familiar, even if our circumstances were different. I've had seasons where I recall a childhood experience through my adult eyes and have newfound insight or sympathy that shakes me.
One theme throughout is longing for support and feeling not good enough since the author wasn't able to easily do it all. As she pleads with her mother for help, for guidance, for advice, her mother is aloof and distant. Years later Maya learns her mother hadn't, in fact, done it all, and there are frank conversations when the details are learned.
There are also moments viewed as gifts, after Maya's mother moves in with them; a situation assumed to be fraught with hardship actually offers some beauty and gentleness and kindness.
Here were a couple excerpts I bookmarked:
"Maybe at our most maternal, we aren't mothers at all: we're daughters, reaching back in time for the mothers we wished we'd had and then finding ourselves. Caretaking offers a chance to atone. My mother didn't drop everything for me when I needed her, but I drop everything for her now. It feels like a do-over, a chance to get things right between us. I'm being the mom she should have been. In doing so, I'm helping us both. We forget, I think, in the act of caring, who is being cared for. ... We do what wasn't done for us and hope it will be enough."
"Her gifts to me may have been inadvertent, but that doesn't mean they weren't gifts. There is beauty in listening to a story in progress, in trusting the storyteller to find her own way."
I resonated with this memoir on multiple levels. Maya speaks lovingly of her mother's involvement growing up and support through college, as well as changes that appear in her mother as Maya herself becomes a parent; later her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Through her own adulthood, Maya is forced to reexamine her experiences and reassess what the reality was with her parents growing up.
For those who don't have a traditional experience of two loving, involved parents happily married, there is a lot to connect to. My mother has depression and schizophrenia, so the feelings and experiences Maya would share were familiar, even if our circumstances were different. I've had seasons where I recall a childhood experience through my adult eyes and have newfound insight or sympathy that shakes me.
One theme throughout is longing for support and feeling not good enough since the author wasn't able to easily do it all. As she pleads with her mother for help, for guidance, for advice, her mother is aloof and distant. Years later Maya learns her mother hadn't, in fact, done it all, and there are frank conversations when the details are learned.
There are also moments viewed as gifts, after Maya's mother moves in with them; a situation assumed to be fraught with hardship actually offers some beauty and gentleness and kindness.
Here were a couple excerpts I bookmarked:
"Maybe at our most maternal, we aren't mothers at all: we're daughters, reaching back in time for the mothers we wished we'd had and then finding ourselves. Caretaking offers a chance to atone. My mother didn't drop everything for me when I needed her, but I drop everything for her now. It feels like a do-over, a chance to get things right between us. I'm being the mom she should have been. In doing so, I'm helping us both. We forget, I think, in the act of caring, who is being cared for. ... We do what wasn't done for us and hope it will be enough."
"Her gifts to me may have been inadvertent, but that doesn't mean they weren't gifts. There is beauty in listening to a story in progress, in trusting the storyteller to find her own way."