To celebrate TRAVELING WITH POMEGRANATES by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Taylor Kidd, a mother-daughter writing duo, and one of our Top Picks for the month, we’re talking mom-dot relationships in Side Dish. I’m pleased to kick things off with a tribute to the woman who mothered me, my grandmother Zola Mae Brown, and today HAPPENS TO BE HER BIRTHDAY. I’ll light a candle and send those loving wishes to the Universe. I know her spirit can feel my love and gratitude for her.

In POMEGRANATES, Sue and Ann travel to Greece, where each is at a crossroads of sorts in their lives: Sue is looking for a creative rebirth as she ages and contemplates writing fiction, while Ann is in graduate school deciding who she wants to be and who she should spend her life with. Their relationship has morphed – as all parent-child relationships must when the child becomes an adult, yet Sue craves a closer relationship with her daughter. She can tell her daughter is depressed, but doesn’t know how to broach the subject without pushing her away.

I would’ve loved the opportunity to travel alone with my grandmother when I reached adulthood. We lived a simple, comfortable life in western Oklahoma, where are only travels were by car or RV in my younger years. After junior high, vacations nearly stopped altogether, though we occasionally visited family in nearby towns. Grandma died when I was 19, just after my freshman year at the University of Oklahoma. I’ve written often about that experience of becoming a motherless daughter twice – first when my mother gave custody of us to my paternal grandparents when we were 4, 3 and 1; and then again, when I lost my grandma to heart disease. Daughters not only want to be all raised up, but to have our mothers there for our adult milestones – marriage, birth, the circle of life. Otherwise life feels incomplete, like a fast-moving car with a missing wheel.

Since I’m the oldest of three girls, we traveled in packs. The only alone time I had with Grandma would be at night at tuck-in or visiting her quilt room where she was busy working on her next creation. She was a good listener, sure in her advice which was plucked straight from the Bible about doing unto others, not judging until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, telling the truth and forgiving transgressions. Like most mothers, she weaved these lessons into our daily lives, creating a moral quilt I could carry within my heart and pass down through the generations.

I’m thankful for the years we had together and our travels across the country, communing with nature one RV hook-up at a time. Mount Rushmore, Grand Canyon, Old Faithful. The joy and sense of adventure in getting away from our daily schedules brought us closer together – hiking up mountains, boating on blue waters, gathering around a picnic table surrounded by thousand year old trees. Because of these special memories, I make it a point to do the same for my family of five.

In POMEGRANATES, Sue begins to appreciate, and even envy, her mother’s love of hearth and home. Her mother and my grandmother shared this passion for motherhood and all it’s accoutrements – why else would my grandmother do it all over again after she’d raised her three boys. For her, it wasn’t only the “right thing to do”; she did it with a joyful heart. It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that I tapped into the mother love connection and its powerful hold on your heart.

If you’re reading this, and your mother (or the woman who raised you) is still living, I encourage you to take time for a special trip away from Normal, to reconnect, laugh and share. If you’re like me and have children in the home, I hope you’ll consider adding more adventure into your lives, even if they are just day trips to enjoy the changing seasons, watch a waterfall, or bunker down in a cabin as snow falls all around you this winter. And since our sorority is based on great friendships, I hope you’ll plan something special with your girlfriends while you’re at it. I hope you’ll consider reading POMEGRANATES as a book club or with your mother, too.

If you’re a Book End Babe chapter member or an author, I invite you to send in a side dish essay this month about your own mother-daughter story. Send it to bookendbabes at me dot com along with a photo of you and your mother or daughter.