 |
| TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR Bavleen Saini(left) of Rexdale with her mother, Surinder. |
The mothers and daughters sit close. They lock eyes and you can see how they are bound together — by genes and family history. The mothers are telling stories their girls have never heard, stories that explain how they came to be the women they are today, and the bottomless wells of love they have for their daughters. The week before Mother’s Day, we invited mothers and daughters from the Star’s girls’ panel, which meets throughout the year, to talk and listen.
In the Saini’s family room in Rexdale, Surinder, 50, is wearing a turquoise salwar kameez and sitting on the leather sofa beside Bavleen, her fourth daughter, who is barefoot and in knee length black shorts. Navreet, 21, who studies aeronautical engineering, is on a smaller sofa beside Harminder, 9. Upstairs, their father, Bhajan, is saying prayers before his altar on which rests the Holy Siri Guru Granth. On the glass table are drinks made of mango pulp and ice cream.
Surinder hesitates and then falteringly begins. “We had three daughters and after that we decided that’s it, no more kids. Then one day I was feeling sick....I went to the doctor.”
There is a long, long pause. And tears.
“My friends told me to go and check the sex of the baby. ‘If it is a baby girl, do the abortion.’ ”
Her voice breaks.
“If it is a boy, keep him. “I told them, ‘This baby is a gift from God. No matter what, I’m going to keep this baby.’ ”
That child was Bavleen, student council president, a confident young woman deciding which university she’ll accept.
“Most of our friends were kind of sad. They said, ‘Why did you have another girl?’ To have a baby boy — it’s a big thing in our culture.”
Bavleen, who has been crying, and staring down at her red painted toes, lifts her gaze.
“It’s hard to accept the possibility that I may not have been here — and my little sister, too. It’s scary that people think about wanting a child of a specific gender. You think it’s the role of a mother to love child, unconditionally, which my mother has done. I’m sure it wasn’t easy, thinking of what people wanted from her.”
“Not one person congratulated me on the baby,” says Surinder. Instead, many wept.
When each of her daughters was born, she ordered small portraits at the hospital. “I told my husband this time I want a big picture, poster size. Because when I saw Bavleen, there was no sadness. She was wonderful.”
“Now people know us as Bavleen’s mother,” continues Surinder. “I am so proud of my daughters. They are beautiful, strong and kind. These daughters are my five stars.”
Ruikun Zhang, 43, works for a pharmaceutical firm as a senior chemist. She sits at the head of the formally set dining table in the family’s airy Willowdale home, with her daughter, Lisa Wang, 18, on her left. There is modern art on the walls along with Lisa’s paintings — flowers and still lifes — from art class.
Lisa looks at her mother expectantly.
Ruikun’s story takes place in Nanjing, China. “Lisa, you know mom is very active and works very hard. I have a lot of hobbies and I like to dance. I’m good at sports. But you don’t really know I was a sports star in track and field.
“Since kindergarten, I always got a gold medal, 100 metres, 200 metres and 5,000 metres.”
When Ruikun was in middle school she competed against a newcomer, who was taller. “In the morning she got the gold medal in 100 metres and I got a silver. I was so shocked. It was a really complex feeling. It was first time someone was better than me.”
They met again in the afternoon at the 200 metres final.
“I didn’t want to disappoint myself and other people watching me. I got the gold medal and broke the school record.”
“Wow,” says Lisa.
“It’s very simple story, but it reflects my personality,” says her mother. “I never give up on anything. I set a goal, try my best and achieve the goal.”
Ruikun moves the story to the present, and Lisa. “Applying to a U.S. university has been a very tough journey for both of us,” she continues. “Sometimes it’s too hard for her. She cries and I cry with her. In your whole life you have certain chances . . . you need to catch them.”
Lisa says: “I’ve always seen my mom as independent, hard-working woman. I have a bit of the lazy gene. Applying to university — it’s a huge thing and I needed my mom to be there for me. There were a lot of times I wanted to give up. It was so tedious. Why am I doing this? Then I realized it is something I have to do. It’s something I’ve taken from my mom.”
She turns to Ruikun. “I never knew you lost and that you set a record, which is pretty amazing, because I’ve always seen you more as a girlie girl.”
Conversation turns to the future. Ruikun says: “This year you will go to the States and won’t be under my wing. I know you’ll be a success.”
“I’m scared to leave home,” Lisa says quietly.
It’s not easy for a mother to hear this. “I’ve told her it’s time. Time to go out.”
For about an hour Maranda Thomas, 13, and her mother Amanda, 43, have been talking about hair. Amanda’s hair is straight, Maranda’s is not, but she would like it to be. They are sitting on the sofa at their home in the Erin Mills neighbourhood in Mississauga.
If left “natural,” black women’s hair can be notoriously hard to manage — so much so that mothers often wash their daughters’ hair into their teen years. To make care easier, they straight-perm — or “relax” — their curly hair. A hairdresser applies a thick straightening cream. And many girls long to try it.
But there’s concern about using the harsh chemicals on young girls, and about the long-term effects. A common conversation — a battlefield at times — among black moms and daughters, it’s also the subject of the hilarious documentary Good Hair, by comedian Chris Rock, who decided to explore the subject when his daughter wanted to straighten her hair.
“In our house this is a topic that has come up just about every day right up until today,” Amanda says. She looks at her daughter. “You’ve asked me certain questions and I’ve never given you the answer.
“You’ll look at pictures of me and ask, ‘Well, mom, how old are you there?’ I thought if I could hold off telling you how old I really was, maybe I would feel less pressure.
“I’m going to be honest. I was 13 when I had my hair permed.”
“Are you serious?” Maranda asks. “You told me 13 is too young. Do you remember being really happy?”
“I was really happy,” her mom replies. “I wanted it for a really long time. Being a teenager you want to try different things. I lived in Vancouver. By the time I went to middle school, I was the only black person in the school. But if I was 13 living now in Mississauga, I would never perm my hair.
“I think black, natural hair is beautiful,” continues Amanda, a full-time homemaker. “If I could do it again, be 13 and have my black natural hair — if I could trade with you — I would. It’s damaging. Not just with hair. I think we cannot just be caught up with the moment, but ask where does this decision take us? What’s going to happen in five years or so?”
Maranda says this is hard for her. “I want my hair to be more relaxed because it is quite thick. I have a mom who’s been through all the stages; you kind of influenced me not to.”
Her mother tries to explain: “When I was 13 I wasn’t aware of all the options. I’d see my friends with five different hair styles in a day. At your age, my hair was in two braids with bobbles.”
Her daughter says she can imagine what it must have been like for her mom, being the only black child in school.
The negotiations begin. They are looking at one another eye to eye. Amanda says she hopes her daughter likes her black hair, and Maranda says she does, but adds, “Sometimes I find it a pain.” Then the girl makes her point: “I can’t even straighten my hair and yours is permed.”
But at the end of the hour, Maranda vows: “I will never perm my hair.”
“Are you serious?’ her mom asks. She promises they’ll look at different ways of straightening her hair without a perm, such as more frequent use of a flat iron.
And her mother is now rethinking her own hair: maybe she’ll go natural again.
As a teenager, Mary Ann Gill, 46, a tall woman with an athletic build, was a talented pitcher on the Port Colborne Comets fastball team. She tells her story to her 16-year-old daughter, Addison, a model who has worked in Milan, Paris and New York.
“My coach was awesome and she would dedicate her time to her girls, whether it was Wednesday or Sunday or Mother’s Day,” Mary Ann begins. “She was determined to have baseball practice. . . I was, like, ‘That’s fantastic,’ not thinking of my own mother.
“I had two people I looked up to — a coach, who was molding me to be a competitive wannabe top notch pitcher, and this parent who loves me so dearly she wants all the best things for me, so of course she gave up her Mother’s Day and let me go to practice.
“I thought when I have kids I’d try to be the best mother, the same way my mother had been to me, but on Mother’s Day I would do something special for me . . . And I’m good when I’m out riding my bike and doing the competitive things I like to do. That makes me strong. And you know how strong and how competitive you can be on the runway. That’s why on Mother’s Day you don’t find your mother at home cooking or having brunch. Where do you find your mother? On her bike . ...”
“Going to the cemetery,” Addison completes the sentence, choking up. It’s a 90-kilometre ride from their home in Caledonia to Port Colborne, where Mary Ann’s mother is buried.
“And looking back and taking in all the things I cherished in my mother and doing something I love to do.”
Mother and daughter are holding hands, looking intensely at each other, as if no one else is there. “I want to come with you,” Addison says, huskily.
“In time, but I don’t think you can keep up with me on the bike.”
“I want to come in the car,” says Addison, who’s named after her grandmother.
“I want you to know when I’m this rough and tough, outgoing woman,” says Mary Ann, who works as a hospital clerk. “I want the best for you guys. I push you, but there’s a lot of love. With our busy-ness we don’t have enough time . . . it’s time to reflect.”
Addison had never known why her mom loved to ride her bike on Mother’s Day. The family usually meets up later in the day. “It all makes sense,” says Addison. “It helps me to understand you better.”
“I just wish you could have watched me play fastball,” her mom says. “I was pretty good. I wouldn’t have been the pitcher I was if I didn’t have the guidance I had.”
Addison says she knows that she is now the inheritor of this tradition of supporting a daughter who has a dream, of holding on to your passion as a mom.
“Taking time to recognize as a woman, wife, parent, you need to take care of yourself,” her mom explains. “As you get older you need to hang on to your youth to stay fresh, to be vital.”
Addison gets a little teary. And her mom leans forward, close to her. People at nearby tables in the Oakville shopping centre look curious.
“What the matter, hon?” her mother asks.
“I love you so much, I get overwhelmed. We’re so busy, we don’t really remember.”
 |
| TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR Alexandra Krasinsky (left) with her daughter, Michelle Arkhangorodsky, near their home in Vaughan. |
Alexandra Krasinsky is an engineer who designs medical equipment used in neurology. Her daughter is Michelle Arkhangorodsky, 16, and over refreshments — lemonade for her, coffee for her mom — she learns about her mother’s resilience as a girl.
Alexandra, knowing teenagers’ desperate need to stay in touch with their friends, first tells Michelle about the summer she travelled with her mother, a geologist, who was taking soil samples in central Russia. It had been some weeks since they had visited the town where they received mail. Her mother was not ready to make the day-long trip there herself. Alexandra, bored and lonely, made her own plans.
“My mother thought I was joking,” Alexandra says. “I told her I’m going to do this. My mail was arriving. My ‘instant messages’ were huge, 10-page letters from my friend.”
Michelle asks, “What did you tell her?”
“I must have been bugging her to go. I said if she is not going, I’m going myself. I took money, apparently I took all the money. I walked through field to a highway, flagged down a truck.”
Michelle’s brow is furrowed, “You were 12?” she asks, incredulous. “It seems so dangerous.”
“You can’t imagine how dangerous it was,” her mother replies. “It was the middle of nowhere.”
After the truck, she travelled by bus for three hours and then walked to the town, where she hoped her mother’s friends would take her in. “I decided to stay one day, have a shower, send my letters, and after one day I repeated the journey. I told Nina (her mother) that I would be back in three days, and I was.” She found her mother miserable and worried.
Alexandra explains that she wants her daughter to known that when she was young, she was gripped by the powerful need to be connected to her friends, just as her daughter is today. And that youthful exploit — well, she’s different today. “She knows I’m not taking risks,” Alexandra says. “I’m always bugging her not to take risks”
“We’re very similar,” Michelle says, “and we usually don’t do things without thinking.” Michelle was late coming home recently and her family was frantic. “I know how much this can make you worry.”
Alexandra also wants to tell her daughter about being one of 25 girls in a class of 225 engineering students. “One professor at university was so anti-girl. He said, ‘Chickens aren’t birds and girls aren’t engineers.’ ”
Now, Michelle looks at her mother curiously. “But it didn’t stop you from being an engineer?”
“Oh, no. It was his problem, not mine. He was an old guy from the army.”
“It didn’t hold people back?” Michelle asks.
“If you want something, you get it,” her mom says. “We thought it was funny at the time.”
One more story: When Alexandra was 18, and one of few women working at a research centre, her boss asked her to type his articles.
“I had to tell him I couldn’t do that. Nice try. He said, ‘Please’. I said, ‘No.’”
Michelle thinks about her life. “I’ve never been discriminated against because I’m a girl.”
“You’re not competing at a level yet where you can be discriminated against,” her mother cautions.