This Writer’s Life

What could you tell about me from this picture of my aunt and mother (right) taken in 1959?Mothers and daughters: these are the relationships I most enjoy writing about. There is arguably no other relationship that is more influential on a young woman than that of her mom.It’s true what that great Irish Proverb says, What’s in the marrow is hard to take out of the bone.With my first book, I began charting the links between family relationships. There are many links in the nature/nurture spectrum. One of the simplest and most evasive is the products our mothers used. Their lotions, detergents and cigarette brands all create a picture of family history, whether we use them today or not. One of my friends even said she recently bought a hand cream and when she got it home and applied it, she realized it was what her mother had used. The scent of it brought back a flood of memories about her childhood and times when her mother held her close. In those times, the fragrance was close and intimate. All these things rushed back to her via a simple hand-cream purchase.Thinking about these questions helped me to chart many of the mother/daughter relationships in Janeology. What the characters chose turned out to be less fascinating than why they chose them.So if I were in your house now, would the products you use tell me anything about your mother?