When I wrote the article When Silence Becomes Home three months ago, I felt it was everything I wanted to say on the subject. Yet, that piece merely unlocked a deeper thought on meaningful relationships—a theme that is increasingly taking over my writing. And so today, I sit on the terrace, admittedly still in the chequered nightshirt I’ve been wearing since morning, which feels like my personal symbol of comfort today. I won’t hide the fact that I am simply relishing the truth that today I have to do nothing; I only may. And giving up this comforting nightshirt is entirely subject to that very principle. My matcha latte has achieved the perfect consistency today, the kind I only manage every now and then, and I have opened a new document.
It is time to step back, retrospectively, into the story.
“You know, it’s still a bit too early to confirm with one hundred per cent certainty, but yes, the uterus looks as though pregnancy is highly likely.” I will never forget this sentence, spoken by my friend Susan. Despite my young age back then, it came after two years of intensive hormonal treatment and countless attempts to conceive, and she delivered the long-awaited news with utmost caution. On that very day, I decided that nothing in this world would ever matter more than that tiny cell inside my body.
The two years of waiting prior to that carried their own heavy weight. The hormonal treatment that ruthlessly splits your days into “before” and “after”. Test after test. Hope that grows weary and learns to be guarded. A body that asks the exact same question month after month. And my breakdowns, month after month, facing a single solitary line on a test I had spent five minutes hypnotising. The final one ended up thrown against the opposite wall. Yes, I hurled it. It sounds aggressive, but believe me, it was simply my way of keeping from crying. And then—this sentence. Cautious, uncertain, not yet one hundred per cent. And yet, it was enough. Because in that tiny cell Susan spoke of with a doctor’s vigilance, I could already hear the future. Like the first paragraph of a long story that I would write with my body, my heart, my everything.
I was going to be a mother.
It was exactly twenty-four years ago.
Allow me to skip a few years now, because this article isn’t meant to be about a baby growing up under the meticulous care of her mother. Nor is it about a little girl who received everything one could possibly wish for a child. Allow me to move much, much further down the line. Gradually, I began to realise that the world has a very narrow framework for the closeness between a mother and her adult daughter. The moment the bond appears too deep, too natural, or too self-evident, it begins to breed unease in people. As though there exists some invisible boundary of intimacy that a mother and daughter should no longer cross past a certain age.
Even my own mother reminded me of the uncut umbilical cord at every opportunity, lecturing me on when it was time to finally do it. Telling me that healthy adulthood apparently requires distance, that too much closeness isn’t quite right. Except, the two of us never felt the need to violently sever anything between us.
Quite the contrary.
Our relationship never stopped evolving. It changed. From mother and daughter, we gradually became two women who understand each other in a way that simply cannot be taught. And so we live. Without explaining ourselves. Without defending it to anyone who cannot see it or fails to understand. There are days when we spend hours on the phone. We text each other good morning and good night. Our lives intertwine naturally. Her friends accept me as a friend; my friends accept her as a part of me. Our worlds do not share a sharp, aggressive boundary. And we both want it that way.
We became each other’s only family and closest friends. It is as if we created our own lineage. Not devoid of relatives, but without a grand, multi-generational family standing behind us. A lineage we built ourselves. Just the two of us. And what we hold between us is all we have.
And it is enough.
Some would say it isn’t right. That a woman whose closest person is her adult daughter is doing something wrong. That an adult daughter whose closest person is her mother is doing something wrong.
But who has the right to determine what is right?
However, there was also a period in this story that unfolded during the pandemic. A period that does not belong in this piece in its entirety here and now, yet remains its most powerful component. It was during this time that we both truly matured. For when you stand beside someone in the dark for a long time, you learn to stand by your own darkness too. When you whisper day in and day out, “You are enough, and I am here for you,” somewhere deep inside, you begin to hear those very same words.
You obtain a PhD after years of study, sacrifice, writing a thesis, and subsequently defending it before a committee of experts. I do not hold an academic title before my name, nor do I have a degree from a prestigious university like the one my daughter attends abroad. Yet, my own domestic PhD lasted twenty-three years.
It was a study undertaken on the move, without textbooks or lectures. It consisted of unprecedented night shifts, where you do not study theory, but rather the breath or temperature of your own child. They were trials by fire, where you must entirely suppress your own ego, your own exhaustion, and your own needs to create a safe environment for someone else. My PhD was about the constant search for the most fragile balance in the world. The balance between how to protect a child you love more than life itself, and how, at the same time, to release her into the world.
This piece of mine is not a family album. It is not a collection of childhood memories or sentimental sighs. It is a manifesto that motherhood is not merely a transient phase to be endured until the child leaves, only for you to return to your original state. It is a lifelong intellectual and emotional professorship. A transformation of the entire female identity.
And today, as I sit on the terrace in my chequered nightshirt with a matcha latte in hand, I know that I have just successfully defended my PhD. Not before a committee of scientists, but before life itself.
My daughter has emerged from the darkness.
She has become a free, independent, still being educated woman, and at the same time, my closest friend.
We did it without manuals and in spite of all the world’s lectures, because the world of adult children may be a strange place, but if you enter it with absolute love and without fear of depth, it becomes the most beautiful home.
With love,
Nicolette xx
