I didn't just follow in my mother's footsteps, I spent the winter after she passed away walking in her black sequined Uggs.
Mom always loved bows and glitter, so when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer and unsure of her footing, physically and metaphorically, she instinctively bought the most festive boots that Macy's had to offer.
I genetically inherited mom's big smile and love of hot pink, and when she passed away, I suddenly inherited her job as an innkeeper, her closet full of treasures and her very full life in our small Vermont town. Every day I transformed, morphing more and more into her. It felt like Kafka meets Freaky Friday.
When I wear my mother's clothes, I feel enveloped in her embrace.
I sit at her desk at the Wilburton Inn and greet her guests who have been coming for decades. I escort dad to parties and accompany him on vacations. I enjoy bringing him groceries.
I spent the first six months of my transformation driving my mother's car. It was so old, it had a tape deck, but I loved that car because I could listen to answering machine cassettes I saved from my early days in New York City. As I commuted each week between my life in New York and my new life in Vermont, mom literally cheered me on saying, 'Hi Melissa. I'm calling to say keep smiling, honey. Go swimming. Don't take everything so seriously. You can do it. I love you.' I wept as I drove, overcome with sorrow, loss and gratitude.
At 45 I was happy to become my mother because I had taken my own life as far as it could go. My 16-year marriage had run its course. I felt I had filled my 10-year old son with so much love and imagination that he would thrive even without me beside him each night to tuck him into bed.
My 20-year career as a songwriter had morphed from youthful days singing love songs in Greenwich Village to leading Melissa & the Moguls, a band of middle aged tycoons in East Hampton. I wrote and performed topical songs for presidential hopefuls and CEOs at swank parties from Beverly Hills to Boston. I conceived, co-wrote and co-produced a million dollar Off-Broadway musical called 'The Joys of Sex' then spent the next decade as 'Moey's Music Party' singing to thousands of children and leading a Princess Revolution to feisty, fun loving five-year olds.
It was my mother who encouraged me to be an artist. When I landed a job at a Madison Avenue advertising firm straight out of college she said, "Don't sell your soul for Jell-O." She encouraged me instead to go to the Neighborhood Playhouse acting school. (What mother encourages her child to be an actor?!)
When I was 22 and wanted to sing by the fountains of Europe alone for a year, she let me go. There was no email, no cell phones, no GPS to track me. She was just happy to hear my voice as I randomly checked in at pay phones from Rome to Budapest to Berlin. Mom said, "Stay as long as you want. I believe in you. The answers are inside."
My mother and I weren't close like so many daughters who call their moms three times a day. My mother's mother was too invasive, so mom gave all four of her children plenty of space. I left home at thirteen to go to boarding school. Then I was off to college and my big city career.
Like Cats in the Cradle, I was too busy to come home. My Greek father called me Persephone, but mom never made me feel guilty. She gave me roots and wings. She let me fly away for 30 years — that’s a decade longer than Odysseus! I will always remember that day while waiting for the subway in a crowded Grand Central platform when I just knew I was done. My city life had run its course. And now every day I am proud to carry my mother’s mantle and come home again.
It's exactly three years since mom passed away. Her sequins Uggs have passed away too, worn out from long family country walks and snowy, salty Vermont winters. Those boots lived fully, like me and like mom, and I think that is the true secret to happiness.
There is no vaccine to prevent tragedy, no crystal ball to predict the future; no bulletproof vest to keep loved ones from harm. The only protection we have is to live fully, joyfully and presently, so that when it is our time to go, our children aren't saddled with guilt and we aren't weighted with regrets.
More than the closet full of cashmere sweaters and the double strand of her graduation pearls, that is the best thing I inherited from my mother: to make choices that have integrity so that you enjoy where you are, what you do and the people you do them with.
My mother and I are growing together. I imagine we are the Vermont version of the Greek myth where Daphne the nymph turns into a laurel tree. With arms entwined like the exuberant pink branches of a Vermont apple tree in spring, my mother and I are smiling, dancing and stretching towards the sun.
