i really loved the band Hole when i was 14.

my favorite episode of This American Life is called "Didn't Ask to Be Born." the first act is the story of a woman who gets divorced and moves her four daughters from tucson to eugene, OR. her two oldest daughters get into the punk scene and eventually start running away. one of them ends up overdosing on heroin and coming home, and the other one disappears for eight months after that. it all happens when one of the daughters is only 14, and the other is 16. there are a few things i really like about the story. it's not told in an interview format -- it's just the mom and the two daughters talking, and some music. i like how honest everyone is. the emotions still feel raw even though a bunch of years have passed. finally, there's something in the girls' voices i can relate to, talking about being teenage girls and inexplicably angry and unable to get along with their mom. an urge to get out, be free, not have someone looking over your shoulder and judging. the first time i heard the show was when i was living in vermont for grad school, and i'd put it on as background noise while i was doing something else. i found myself completely drawn into the story, stopped whatever else i was doing, turned it up really loud, and flopped on my bed to listen to every word.

at the end of the act, ira glass mentions that the mom in the story is writing a book about the whole thing. i noticed it in the bookstore recently so i checked it out from the library and read it this weekend. it's called Live Through This. it's one of the better memoirs i've read. i even cried at the end. i like it because the woman has such an awareness of the mistakes she made in dealing with her daughters, and isn't afraid to admit the ways she fucked up and was wrong-headed about things just like they were. it was strange and kind of enlightening for me to read about the other side of the mother/daughter experience.

i didn't get along with my mom for a long time. she had a lot of problems, substance related and otherwise, for most of my adolescence. not that i was perfect or anything. she once tried to bribe my brother (with actual money) for him to tell her where i was when i stayed out all night. even though most of the time i was just at bickford's drinking coffee and chain smoking, i guess the thought of what i could have been doing really got to her. i came in the front door after school one day my senior year with my friend justin, and she told me she was going to the hospital. she went to rehab for a month and did AA for a year or something. she emerged as a different person, somebody i found it a little easier to get along with, but also somebody who seemed to want something from me i wasn't giving.

i read an interview with the author of the book and this one piece of it really clicked:

"Instead I tried to concentrate on my stuff: that is, the necessity of finally giving up my dearest-held illusions of motherhood—for instance, that I would bear children whose central purpose in life would be to take care of me; and that my daughters’ desire for autonomy was somehow a threat to me—so I could finally allow them to grow into the bright, capable women they’ve all become."

my mom has always just wanted to be a mom, in a way i don't relate to or really understand. but after reading this book i'm starting to get it a little more. way to go, books that make you feel stuff!

i'm also kind of obsessed with this website and associated book. it's a site where miranda july and another artist dude post assignments and all kinds of people do them and send in their "reports," which are then posted. they put together a book of some of the highlights. the assignments are really clever and evocative, like "take a photo of your parents kissing" and "make an encouraging banner." the one i think i like best is "write the phone call you wish you could have." the thing that's striking about a bunch of them is that they aren't fantasies -- they read like a real, complicated conversation would go, and things aren't always resolved at the end. i like that. i wish my brother would call and tell me he's moving to denver.