Pt. 2: "Your life is just like the show Gilmore Girls!"

Friday at Starbuck's
Me: Have you seen the show Gilmore Girls?
Sarah: Only one or two episodes.
Me: You know how the mother and daughter characters are so close... Do you and your mom have a bff (best friends forever) relationship like they have on the show?
Sarah: Uh... no. We're pretty boring people. To me, my mom is still just my mom.
Me: ...

Picture this: Two women face each on a plush couch while one has her foot propped up on the other's knee. The other woman crouches over the foot and carefully brushes nail polish over the big toe as owner of the aforementioned toe channel surfs through late night television. The two people look too similar to be just friends, but perhaps sisters? This was what I imagined as the perfect single mother-daughter relationship (maybe I overdid it on the Gilmore Girls episodes?), where the only difference between the two people is that one has slightly more wrinkles than the other.

I can't believe she burst my bubble just like that! To think that they don't actually gossip about cute boys while giving each other pedicures. Only recently Sarah and her mom started talking about boys. Though her mom welcomes this kind of girl talk, Sarah still feels a little awkward and slightly hot in the face on the subject. This type of situation is weirdly similar to the ones even I've been having lately. For me, it's extremely embarrassing sharing this information with my mother, but I always thought a single mom and her daughter talked about this kind of thing all the time? Could I be wrong? It definitely wouldn't be the first time.

After re-listening to that part of our conversation, I noticed something interesting she mentioned. "My mom is kind of like my mom and my dad." This simple statement says so much. Like other single parents, her mom has to play a dual role in order to raise her properly. No matter what is going on in their lives, her mom tries to communicate with her as much as possible, making her feel comfortable enough to share any kind of information. Parents of nuclear families strive for this as well, whether they achieve that bond with their kids is uncertain.

One thing that remains constant in Sarah's house is eating dinner together, which is most important to mother and daughter. Even if they're both extremely busy and it's only for 15 minutes or so, they will pull out their miniature Korean-style dinner table, place it with Korean side dishes and sit cross-legged facing each other. These 15-minute dinners really put a crunch on their conversations, so to make up for lost time, they will spend several nights each month at various restaurants just to eat and talk without interruption. At first when I heard this, all I could picture was Sarah's mom asking her a series of questions about school and relationships in the manner of a detective "grilling" a suspect in the manner of NYPD Blue. However, Sarah revealed that she actually enjoyed these dinners because it gave them time to really talk and have fun, something that nuclear families may not even be privileged to.

Now that she's much older, her mom is more open to talking about topics that used to be off-limits, such as boys and relationships (seems true with my mom too). Whether Sarah wants to divulge any of this information is her own prerogative of course (exactly how I feel). It certainly shows a closeness in their relationship when her mom is interested in this aspect of her life, but asking her to pull out her yearbook so she can have a gander at "cute band boy" or "euro history hunk" makes her a little uncomfortable. Looks like there are just certain things a daughter wants to keep mum, from her mom.