Like mother, like daughter

“You have her laugh,” a colleague of my mother’s told me years ago. I smiled and rolled my eyes, unwilling to acknowledge what I already knew to be true.

But a daughter can only deny her likeness to her mother for so long. I finally faced my reality one night in March 2020 during the COVID-19 shutdowns, when I was watching something on TV that was apparently funny enough to induce a giggle. As quickly as I laughed out loud, I froze, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I finally heard it myself: the sound of my mother’s laugh leaving my own mouth.

Surely I’m not the only grown woman who has had to come to terms with turning into her mother. I imagine most if not all of us spent our tween and teen years resisting those similarities only to realize as adults that nature and nurture are forces beyond our control. Our mothers appear in our facial expressions or our gestures. In our posture, perhaps. In some comment we make or some habit we form. In bodily functions we don’t talk about in polite company.

Is it so bad, though, that we daughters end up so much like our mothers? I hope not — because I have realized over the years I am so much like Julie Cole.

YOU SAID WHAT ABOUT MY COOKIES?

One of my favorite cousins caused a bit of a stir one Thanksgiving when, intending to get a rise out of me, he told me that my delicious homemade cookies tasted like they were bought at Hy-Vee. Those were fighting words for sure — like Julie Cole, I don’t take insults of my baking lightly.

My dad has been a really good husband for 43 years, but he did commit one faux pas that had lasting consequences for my whole family, when early in their marriage he told my mother that her chocolate chip cookies weren’t the same as his mother’s. According to Mom, the solution to that problem was simple — she wouldn’t make chocolate chip cookies for her husband ever again.

The woman was unwavering. Growing up, my brother and I never had chocolate chip cookies at home. We’d get our fix elsewhere, from our grandmother or our friends’ families. (To this day, I can’t be trusted around a package of Chips Ahoy.) Finally, when my brother was a senior in high school, he came home and posed the fateful question: “Mom, why don’t you ever make chocolate chip cookies?”

“Ask your father,” she barked.

Eventually, she relented, her chocolate chip embargo having lasted 28 years. Julie Cole now makes chocolate chip cookies quite regularly, for friends, church members, and family — including my father, who, after learning his lesson the hard way, happily eats them.

THE QUEEN OF NEGOTIATING

Eager to return to my job after tendon surgery on my left hand in 2019, I had a brief back-and-forth with a physician assistant over activity restrictions he was outlining in a letter of release that my employer was requiring. Eventually we settled on what the letter would state. My mother, who had driven me to the appointment, sat there rolling her eyes.

“She’s been negotiating like this since she was three years old,” she explained to the PA.

This is true. I learned it from her. Julie Cole is the queen of negotiating, much to the delight of my father, who tells stories from several of the times he’s gone with her when she was buying a new vehicle.

One story, from when Mom bought her 1986 Dodge Lancer, involves a complete breakdown in negotiations. The saleswoman — undoubtedly feeling the pressure that came with being a female in the 1980s auto sales industry — tried a little too aggressively to upsell an additional feature by telling her, “You’d be stupid not to get that.”

Mom responded by picking up her checkbook and walking out the door. The sale would eventually be completed after the manager ran after her and pleaded for her to come back. Mom and Dad drove home in her brand-new vehicle, purchased under terms she found quite satisfactory.

Mom has negotiated all of our vehicle purchases over the years. She didn’t need a ride to the dealer when she purchased her current vehicle, but Dad accompanied her anyway, eager to watch his wife flex her negotiating skills. She’d found the vehicle online and had a number in mind — lower than what she expected the asking price to be — and made it clear to Dad on the way that she would not pay a penny more than her number.

When they arrived, the salesman quoted the very price she was willing to pay. Mom was so shocked that it didn’t dawn on her to try to get him to go even lower. They drove home in her new shiny red Lincoln, Mom feeling elated, Dad crestfallen from the lack of action.

I’LL CARVE MY OWN PATH, THANKS

It’s hard to fathom that as recently as one generation before mine, nothing more was expected of young women — especially from rural backgrounds like my mother’s — than to finish high school, get married, and stay home to raise children. Mom told me once that when she told her high school guidance counselor that she wanted to go to college, he had looked at her with a puzzled expression and replied, “Why would you want to do that?” She was one of only four girls in her graduating class to pursue higher education, paying her own way and graduating from Iowa State with a degree in finance.

College was expected of my generation. When I graduated high school, female enrollment outnumbered that of males by over 20%. My experience differed from my mother’s in many ways. I was uninterested, unmotivated, and unsure of a career path. My deteriorating musculoskeletal condition due to idiopathic arthritis gave me the excuse I needed to leave school. After multiple orthopedic surgeries, I went into the workforce, where it took me a long time to balance the needs of my health with the need to earn a living.

What makes us alike is our desire to carve our own paths in life, regardless of what may have been predetermined for us. Julie Cole’s path was to graduate college, start a career, get married and raise a family. Mine was to work in a series of occupations — banking, customer service, freelancing, public service, and now journalism — that have provided some incredible insights and experiences. For both of us, it involved using our intellect, applying our talents, and choosing careers and relationships that have afforded us a sense of satisfaction and worth.

In the mid-1990s, Julie Cole worked for the investment division of downtown Cedar Rapids a bank in a building on Third Street SE. Today, that building houses the offices of The Gazette. Every day when I go into the office, I sit only steps away from where my mother sat 30 years ago. Like mother, like daughter.

And we are indeed so alike. We’re both smart and assertive, having grown up as girls in families outnumbered by boys. We love football, Wheel of Fortune, the game of cribbage, and the Iowa State Cyclones. If being like our mothers is inevitable, I sure got lucky to be like Julie Cole.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com

Opinion content represents the viewpoint of the author or The Gazette editorial board. You can join the conversation by submitting a letter to the editor or guest column or by suggesting a topic for an editorial to editorial@thegazette.com