Lessons in mothering adult daughters

What I learned from a fraught conversation with them about a painting

It was a spring weekend in New England, still chilly, but blossoming with bright yellow daffodils and a few budding trees. A perfect weekend to put aside deadlines, writing and my constant desire to become more… a better writer, a better person. Plus, I was visiting my two adult daughters (who have houses just down the street from one another) and was perfectly content with our plans to hang out and chat about their ongoing home (and life) projects.

It started out innocently, as most interactions do. Hanging in my older daughter’s living room was a portrait of our yellow cottage in Maine that I hadn’t seen in ages. I recognized it as a painting I commissioned 15 years ago by a very popular Maine painter and friend, whose work I almost always love. But the perspective in this particular painting is a bit askew, partly a mistake on my part. Peeking at the canvas, as the artist worked en plein air, I had asked her to include both the front and side of our house, as well as my garden blooming with peppermint phlox, and also the thorofare beyond, where a boat is puttering by. In real life, you can’t see all these things at once. She good-naturedly complied, but the result is this slightly awkward scene. When it was completed, I wished I had left well enough alone.

the painting

At some point, ten years ago or more, I gave the painting to my older daughter who was looking for art to put on the walls of her house. She said she’d take it but didn’t particularly like it either. Then I forgot about the painting completely.

But over this weekend, standing in my daughter’s living room and seeing it with fresh eyes after so many years, it suddenly looked okay, even charming. I could still see the warped perspective, sure, but it didn’t bother me as it had before. I loved the colors and the reminder of my garden blooming in deep summer, the best time on the Maine coast.

Casually, I asked my daughter if I might take the painting back, knowing that she didn’t love it.

This is when things went askew, far worse than the painting’s perspective.

I feel I must defend myself somewhat. Until age eight, I was an only child, a fact which sometimes gets me into trouble. Combined with my ADHD (which causes brain fog and black-and-white thinking), I can misread the room, or be too blunt, or ask for the wrong thing. I’m not practiced at the sniping back-and-forths that erupt and dissipate easily amongst noisy siblings, no one worse for wear.

So imagine my surprise when the temperature of the room suddenly shot up.