ABSTRACT
Indeed, it is complicated. As I sit and try to write this account of motherdaughter relationships across three generations, I am stumped, I ask myself how I can faithfully represent the complexity of the maternal relationships I witnessed for 8 months, while at the same time presenting my interpretations in a coherent fashion. My mind wanders to a section of a poem by Amy Lowell (1916), entitled “Patterns”:
I walk down the garden-paths, And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare Pattern.
