THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410250511
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ROSEMARY ARMAO, SPECIAL TO HRW
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
EVELYN S. Bassoff's ``Between Mothers and Sons: The Making of Vital and Loving Men'' (E.P. Dutton, $20.95) is a hard book for a mother of sons to get through.
In some parts, this is due to Bassoff's literary style, a cloying meld of her Ph.D.-level psychological insights with an as-told-to-the-layperson tone that she's apparently acquired as a Parents Magazine columnist. Hence, the book is full of such stuff as a five-page interpretation of Bambi: ``In Bambi's trembling admiration of the elk, we sense the young deer's happy anticipation and fear and awe of his own budding masculine power. . . ''
Also, some of the difficulty stems from Bassoff's insistent use of her own privileged family (one son, one daughter) as a source of illustrative examples. The Bassoffs are wealthy, supereducated and blessed, to judge from her maudlin depiction. Try relating to this: ``Recently, when my husband and I were preparing for a trip to relatively untraveled parts of Greece, I came to understand at a feeling level what it must be like for a little child to leave mother.''
But mostly, Bassoff's book is hard to get through because it rings with the stabbing, sad truth that every mother of a son ultimately learns. To raise a son is to give him up.
I read her book as my oldest son started his first month away at college and as his two younger brothers continued daily life with their father 1,200 miles away from the place where I've started a new job, so the break seems raw and sudden to me. Usually sons slip away a little at a time in a series of heartaching events: the first day of all-day ``big school,'' a withheld kiss and a push away at 6 or 7, a driver's license, a senior prom.
``The irony of motherhood,'' Bassoff says, ``is that it comprises two seemingly opposite tasks; the loving mother first creates a unity with her child, and then, piece by piece, over years and years of parenting, disassembles it.''
To do the job right, you actually have to cheer them on as they move away from you. The process of separating is healthy and normal but only for the child (though Bassoff doesn't have to remind us). ``Some mysterious inner force urges the child to separate itself from the mother. However, no such comparable force compels the mother to separate from the child.''
For years, I have dreamed about holding babies. It's a common mother's dream, Bassoff tells me. I've mourned that I have no daughters and so am doomed to a lonely old age as a mother-in-law. Bassoff repeats that ugly, old saying: ``A daughter's a daughter the rest of her life. A son's a son 'til he takes a wife.'' Friends, usually friends with daughters, have scoffed at my worry and assured me that, of course, I'd still be friends with my adult sons. Bassoff knows better.
``Although I met several men who loved and liked and cared about their mothers and who gladly shared parts of their lives with them,'' she writes, ``I did not meet one who called his mother his `friend,' i.e. his confidante and companion. . . Having struggled so hard and so long to become separate from their mothers. . . they are not about to break down the protective fences. . . ''
What's a mother to do?
Bassoff suggests letting go. Teach your sons to love their fathers (or some other male relative or friend they can look up to), applaud their baby steps toward independence and cheer their shows of masculine prowess on the ballfield. Tell them a lot that they're wonderful. Don't cling. Don't overindulge; find your own enterprises and your own life aside from them.
Maybe we need a ritual like the one that helped ancient Aztec mothers deal with the hard truth the minute their sons were born. They would cut the umbilical cord with a flint, Bassoff says, and recite this: ``Here you spout, here you flower. Here you are severed from your mother as the chip is struck from the stone.'' MEMO: Rosemary Armao, a former VP/LS staff writer and editor, is executive
director of the Investigative Reporters & Editors at the University of
Missouri-Columbia. by CNB