Connection at a Cellular Level

 

My daughter said yesterday, ‘Mom, will you get a dog when I go to college?” The week before she said, “Mom, are you going to be okay when I’m gone?” 

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, “I’m already preparing. I just started a painting class!”

I’m very attached. For years I’ve felt self-conscious about how much I love my daughter. Even when she is a total asshole, I love her. I try to minimize my love, to be more chill, like a cool mom who has a balanced life — mother and professional, partner and parent, friend and family member. 

When I was voicing my anticipation about my daughter leaving for college with a friend the other day, she shared some wonderful wisdom. This friend is in her sixties and has two sons in their late twenties. As we talked about my daughter’s upcoming transition to college, she said, “Motherhood….It’s something,” and then described how, the first time she saw one of her sons after two years of COVID separation she laid hands all over him. “It was carnal,” she said, “I had to touch him all over,” she said patting the air in front of her, “I actually read that the we share cells with our babies until they are twenty-seven years old.”

Hearing my friend say this was strangely affirming, like maybe my attachment to my daughter is biological, something I can’t control. I felt a physical sigh of relief. Maybe there is nothing really wrong with me after all. I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of days and decided to do some research. 

What I found on the world wide web was fascinating. For example, while the majority of the cells that come from the fetus are destroyed by the mom’s immune system, some stay and become embedded in various organs, and become a part of the mother. 

According to the article I read, beginning in the early weeks of pregnancy, the fetus transfers cells to the mother and vice versa. The fetal cells have been found to stay in the mother’s body beyond the time of pregnancy, sometimes for many years (even decades) after birth. The mom’s cells also stay in the baby’s blood and tissues for decades. In one study, more than half of adults still had maternal cells in their blood.

This phenomenon blew my mind and warmed my heart. I found great comfort and affirmation in this newfound piece of scientific knowledge. Today when I was sitting on the couch with my daughter on a rare Saturday morning when we were both home in the same room with the same idea to chat, she stretched her long legs out next to my long legs and our skin touched in the two inches between her pants and socks and my pants and her socks. 

“We’re connected,” I thought to myself. “A little bit of me is inside of her and a little bit of her is inside of me.” I know other mothers (and children) must feel the same way. I know that for me, even when I have been ragingly angry or brutally disappointed by my mother, I still feel connected to her. There’s still something visceral that keeps me longing for her. I think she feels the same way about me and my sisters. 

One could argue that a bunch of random cells living in the liver or the pancreas doesn’t mean much, that it’s just a simple biological phenomenon and there is not necessarily an emotional impact. That could be true, but I don’t like that argument as much as the one my friend shared. 

I thought about my friend patting her tall son’s shoulders and arms and back and head, putting her open palms on his whiskered cheeks. Like coming home to the familiar smells, shapes, and sounds that you know so well you don’t even have to know that you know them. They are just there. 

When my daughter goes to college she probably won’t come home for any longer than a few months in the summer and then maybe a week or two for visits. This is what I am preparing myself for. I feel scared and sad and excited and worried. I’ll MISS her. It will be an entirely new experience to be so far away. 

I know I’ll be okay. I’ll get a dog. I’ll take another painting class. I’ll start a new hobby. But I will be okay. This strange, unrelenting attachment I feel, that I’ve always felt, is okay. Even though my daughter was born eighteen years ago, I’m still attached. I’m still connected.

And so is she.