Through Mom's Eyes: Simple Wisdom From Mothers Who Raised Extraordinary Humans by Sheinelle Jones - 8

Listen to Children…Learn from Them

Vijaya Lakshmi, Padma Lakshmi’s mom

Just when my husband and I finally got the hang of life with our bright and inquisitive first son, I was pretty excited when I learned that I was having boy/girl twins. Once I got over the shock (wait, there are TWO babies in there?!), I was overjoyed that our little family was gaining another son— and a daughter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to be the queen of the house, and three cheers for all of you moms out there flying solo in a family full of big and little men, but I was happy that I wasn’t going to be the only girl long term.

There is something incredibly unique about the mother-daughter connection, and I was excited to become the mom in that fascinating equation. When I knew I was having a little girl, a whole set of new hopes and dreams kicked in. Will my daughter want to tap dance like I did? Will she become the fifth generation in our family’s chosen sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and maybe even choreograph her line’s step shows, like yours truly did? I know, I know, I was getting ahead of myself, but it was fun to think about (and still is).

My mother and grandmother have always been close and, even though we’re different, my mother and I are too. We’ve already established that she’s a journaler, and I am not. She’s an avid cook, not me. Some mother-daughter duos talk every day; we don’t. But I know she’s always just a phone call away, and I don’t take that for granted. No one loves me like my mom, roots for me like my mom, hurts for me like my mom, or knows me the way she does—and I still depend on her for all of that, all the time.

According to a 2016 study published in the Journal of Neuroscience , the mother-daughter bond is likely based more on science than similar features, matching outfits, or mommy-and-me classes. MRI testing shows similar anatomy in the emotion centers of mothers’ and daughters’ brains, which can explain why they understand each other better than they do anyone else. It might also explain why they often clash—like two positive sides of magnets that repel. Or why even daughters who struggle in their relationships with their moms ultimately become just like them—and still need them. I may be a middle-ager with kids of my own, but there are still plenty of days when I sigh to myself, and think, I just want my mommy…

Whatever a mother-daughter relationship looks like, for better or worse, it is the primary shaper of who we become as women, and as mothers ourselves. Depending on how we feel about our childhoods, we may strive to be just like our moms—or nothing like them—or something in between. Sometimes we become like them in spite of ourselves. All that really matters is that we find our way.

But what happens when you don’t have a mother to emulate or guide you? How do you manage in those “I want my mommy” moments when your mom isn’t there to call? What if you find yourself raising your precious child alone in a different country, in circumstances more stressful and difficult than you ever prepared for or imagined—what then?

This is the situation Vijaya Lakshmi found herself in as a divorced young mother trying to build a life for her and her daughter, Padma, in the 1970s in New York. Half a century later, this accomplished, humble woman still gets emotional recalling what it was like for them and how overwhelmed and out of her depth she often felt while raising her only child. But Padma’s success as a model, author, activist, and television host—she holds an Emmy for Bravo’s Top Chef and was featured on Time magazine’s 2023 “100 Most Influential People” list—are proof that Vijaya did more than a few things right. Like countless moms facing hardship, Vijaya made a way out of no way , as the old folks say. And, while that often meant being a solid pillar of strength for her daughter, it also occasionally meant letting Padma see her vulnerabilities and even leaning on her young child for support at times.

When it comes to best practices in mothering, there are a few opposing schools of thought. There’s the never-let-’em-see-you-sweat approach—which my mom and grandmama modeled for me. And there’s the kids-have-to-know-life-is-tough approach—where children are not only exposed to some of life’s harsher realities, but they are also relied upon to deal with them head-on, and maybe even help their parents do the same. Vijaya didn’t have the luxury of consciously choosing between parenting styles. As an Indian immigrant trying to survive in a foreign country where she and little Padma stood out physically, barely spoke the language, had little money, and no other family to rely upon, Vijaya was just trying to keep their lives afloat.

Even though divorce was particularly shameful for women in Hindi culture, Vijaya fled an abusive marriage in Madras (now Chennai), in 1972. Padma was two years old. “She is the only child and my precious gem,” says Vijaya. “I always treasured her. She was my only support at the time when I had separated from my difficult marriage.”

To keep them safe, Vijaya made a series of tough decisions that would change both of their lives forever. Like so many immigrants from around the world, she left her home and everything she knew to seek new opportunities and a fresh start. Padma stayed behind with Vijaya’s father and stepmother in Chennai while Vijaya trained to become a nurse and make a new home for them in New York. Until then, they had never been apart, and the separation was long and painful. They didn’t see each other for more than a year.

“There was no other choice I could do,” Vijaya explains. “If I brought her [to the US] alone, how could I leave her and go to work?” Instead, Vijaya spent a significant chunk of her small income on long-distance phone calls (this was pre-cellphone times), trying to shrink the twelve thousand miles between them with chitchat and promises that they would be together soon. Finally, after fourteen months away, Vijaya flew back to India to visit her little girl.

“One day we were both alone, and she asked me, ‘Mom, when are you going to come and take me to America?’ My eyes started tearing,” Vijaya recalls. “ ‘Pretty soon, my darling. I am working on it. You keep learning.’ ” Padma’s grandfather had been teaching her everything he knew about America, even helping her to memorize the states. Six months later, Vijaya kept her promise, and she and Padma, then four, were together again.

“A joyous day in my life,” Vijaya says wistfully, adding that successfully reuniting them was her greatest achievement to that point.

The end of their time apart marked the beginning of a new struggle together. Vijaya was still adapting to American culture—the language and accents, even simple things, like what is available in which store. And now she had a young child to provide for and guide. Everyday life was a steep learning curve for them both. Even activities that offer most moms a welcome break on a stressful day, like going to the playground where they could both make friends, were a challenge because of the language barrier. As someone who grew up in a strong village with lots of “pretend” aunties, I can only imagine the isolation for Vijaya and Padma in those early days.

Vijaya worked long, sometimes odd, hours, trying to make their new life as comfortable as possible. Padma would sometimes cling to her at night, not wanting her to leave. So she would lie down with her daughter and tell her a story, then explain to her how working enabled her to buy the things they needed.

“I had a babysitter for the night,” Vijaya recalls, “and during the daytime, I took her to a childcare place. Half of my salary would go to that. Now and then I would work [overtime] and make [extra] money. She used to tell me, ‘Mom, one day I’ll become a movie star [and] you won’t have to buy anything.’ ”

Perhaps because of their early separation and Padma’s spending that time with older adults, she was mature for her age. Before saying their goodbyes, her grandfather had also encouraged her to help her mom however she could—and that’s exactly what Padma did.

“She was like a big girl,” says Vijaya, “always saying ‘How can I help you?’ ” Padma seemed to understand that her mother’s life was not easy, and she would look for ways to lighten her mom’s load. Without siblings to play with, Padma became good at making her own fun and simultaneously taking care of her mom. Vijaya recalls how her daughter would stack pennies around the house, saving to buy her a Mother’s Day present. Sometimes, Padma would leave little messages in the lunch box that her mom took to work. No simple napkin notes, she might use a needle to poke a hole in a peanut and place a tiny message inside.

Listening to Vijaya recall their difficult days of transitioning to this strange, new life, I couldn’t help but think about the days when my own mother was single, and it was just the two of us. When a child sees a parent going through a hard time, it changes the child’s perspective. When my mom got divorced from my stepdad and had me and my younger brother to manage, I saw her resiliency, although I didn’t have the words for it at the time. But I also saw her struggle financially, although she never talked to me about it. She was able to lean on her parents for help, but I don’t think it occurred to either one of us that there were ways in which she could have also leaned on me. I admire Padma for being “a rock” for her mother.

Padma “was very creative and resourceful,” Vijaya says proudly, especially in the kitchen. One of the ways Vijaya preserved their culture for her daughter was through their vegetarian Indian diet. “We cooked together when [Padma] was very young. One day she said, ‘Mom, I can cook!’ ”

Vijaya laughed at the time, but her daughter was serious. She started with soups, and over time she broadened her cooking repertoire and perfected her skills. When Vijaya decided to pursue her master’s degree, Padma encouraged her and became even more independent, often bringing her mother snacks while she studied. Vijaya accepted Padma’s help, and watched her grow increasingly self-sufficient, focused, and ambitious.

By then, Vijaya had remarried and moved the family to Los Angeles, which brought new challenges. Padma has been open in interviews about the fact that while she was surrounded by love as a child, she struggled with self-confidence and wrestled with her identity. When one of Padma’s teachers asked Vijaya if they were French, Vijaya, of course, said, “No! We are from India.” After the teacher explained that Padma herself had shared that information, Vijaya questioned her daughter and Padma said it was easier to give the teachers and kids at school a reference they were familiar with, as opposed to trying to explain the truth.

I silently think of the generations of immigrants who have come to the US and changed their names not just to fit in, but to accommodate Americans’ limited facility (and, sometimes, patience) with their native languages. Padma called herself Angelique for a while and endured an onslaught of mean kids’ cruelties including being called a “black giraffe,” which triggered deep insecurities about her race and height. The who’s-sorry-now moments of adulthood can be sweet, but they don’t take that early pain away. I know what it’s like to be one of a few, if not the only, person of color in a room; it’s not easy, especially for a child, to articulate how that can feel. Heck, it’s not easy even for adults.

“I had to make her sit and talk,” Vijaya says, recalling her attempts to comfort and reassure her daughter. Using some of their African American and Puerto Rican friends as examples, she told Padma, “ ‘We’re all different but we are the same because we are human beings. We feel hurt, we feel the anger, we feel love in the same way. So don’t let that bother you.’ ” But she adds, sadly, “Of course it did.”

There’s a saying, attributed to the novelist Barbara Kingsolver, that I’ve only ever heard other moms repeat: A mother can only be as happy as her unhappiest child . All these years of healing later, the pain of her daughter’s heartache is still etched into Vijaya’s face. Having lost her own mother at a young age, Vijaya wanted desperately to be the best mother she could but, unlike me, her mother wasn’t there to call, or emulate. Without her mother to rely on in that way, Vijaya sometimes turned to her child.

“There was no topic that was not discussed with her,” Vijaya recalls. “She was mature for her age and the necessity of life [was that] I had to discuss so many things with her.” Vijaya also made it clear to her daughter that she had to work hard and do well—no slacking. Padma has talked about how, with a nurse for a mom, in order to be sick enough to skip school, she practically had to require surgery. “Work is like worship for us,” Vijaya explains. “That’s how my father thought. Anything you’re doing, do it with full heart.

“If she did not study a topic and got a C or a B, I will get upset. If she studied hard and she got a C or D, it was okay, but she has to work harder.” In fact, Padma was an excellent student and valedictorian of her high school.

Vijaya is too humble to suggest that her way is the right way, it was just the way that evolved for her as she did her best to raise Padma in circumstances where she felt like it was the two of them against the world. I’m pretty sure every parent would agree that, most days, we just do what we need to do, the best way we can—and pray it will be enough.

When Padma was a teenager, the whole family was tested by a car accident that left them all hurt. Padma has spoken and even written about the day her parents’ red Ford Mercury careened off the highway in Malibu, plunging forty feet down an embankment. Severely wounded and covered in glass and debris, they had to be cut from the car.

Padma’s stepfather was badly hurt and the accident left a long, permanent scar on Padma’s arm that, for years, she tried to hide, until photographer Helmut Newton convinced her that it was beautiful and made her unique. Only Vijaya’s injuries were extensive and life threatening. They included multiple fractures, a severed sternum, and a large cardiac contusion, which resulted in an extended hospital stay and a mountain of medical bills. Just as she had been as a very young child, throughout Vijaya’s ordeal and recovery, fourteen-year-old Padma was her mother’s rock—and she still is today. Vijaya beams while talking about her daughter’s boldness and resiliency: “She is like a woman I wanted to be, but I didn’t have guts to be.”

Our lives are so different, but Vijaya’s story really resonates with me. Padma helped her mother when she was at her lowest points and—here’s the big lesson, for me—Vijaya allowed her to. So many of us try to protect our children from our struggles and self-doubt. It was as if Vijaya not only took her Superwoman cape off at times, but placed it on her daughter—and that empowered them both.

We all have times when life feels out of our control or knocks us down, toppling our confident, normal routines. We think of those times as requiring courage and strength but sometimes that means letting others—even our kids—carry the ball for a while. Vijaya had done this and, as a result, her whole family won. I knew how that felt; I had done it too.

A few years into my job as a correspondent and weekend newsreader at The Today Show , I started to notice that I was hoarse at the end of each day. I began drinking tea and sucking on throat lozenges to get through the shows. I was working and traveling a lot, and I assumed that my voice would heal itself over time. It needed to. This was my dream job, and I didn’t want to blow it by being sidelined for any reason, even my health.

On any given morning at around four a.m., I could get a call from a producer requiring me to hop up and work on a news story for that morning’s show. Still new and trying to prove myself, I said yes to every assignment. By five a.m., I’d be rushing through the golden revolving doors at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. I’d zoom up the elevator with the famous peacock carpet to an audio booth where I’d record a report that would air within hours. When I found myself having to rerecord several times to get a take without my voice cracking, I began following those early producers’ calls with a silent prayer as I gargled with warm salt water.

After a few months, my throat was worse. Unasked, the overnight crew would often have hot water and honey waiting for me upon my arrival. They seemed to be almost rooting for me, just to record a two-minute news spot. I felt increasingly helpless and worried. Then, one Saturday morning, as I was getting ready to go live, one of my producers spoke into her headset so that only I could hear. “Hey,” I heard her say in my tiny earpiece, “I’ve noticed that every time you go to speak, you’re clearing your throat a lot. Have you been to an ENT? If you haven’t, you should, and I have someone you can call.”

The truth is, I hadn’t been to any doctor in ages, let alone an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Generally thinking of myself as young, healthy, and too busy to put more on my plate, doing so hadn’t even crossed my mind (even though that’s the opposite of what we preach in the countless health segments I’ve done over the years). I went the following week and, after the ENT put this long tube with a camera on the end of it down my throat, I sat staring at a monitor as she pointed to a magnified version of a tiny polyp on my inflamed vocal cords. That polyp, about the size of the tip of a well-sharpened pencil, was the source of my issues—and now, my fear.

In my business, especially when you’re still proving yourself, you want to stay ready to grab every opportunity. I was twenty years into my career and finally in the job I’d been working toward that entire time. I wasn’t going to let some vocal polyp get in the way of my goals. So, I opted to sidestep surgery and go with plan B. It sounded simple enough: rest my voice at home; save it for work. And see a vocal therapist, weekly. Looking back, I probably should’ve had surgery right away, but the slight risk of harm to my vocal cords felt too big to take. That said, I hadn’t really thought about how I was going to manage at home without talking.

My twins were around five years old and my oldest was eight. The boys seemed to just roll with it, while my daughter, Clara, would stare at the newly mute me, so confused. She would place her little hands on my cheeks and say, “Mommy, just do this! ‘Hummmm!’ ” She was determined to fix me. “Just open your mouth!” It was cute and funny. Until it wasn’t. I would talk when necessary, but optional talking was out. I couldn’t even read my kids a bedtime story. But, after more than a year of this, my voice was still cracking all over the place. So, finally, in February 2020, I had the polyp removed. And, to have the best long-term prognosis, I agreed not to work until I was fully healed. That meant six weeks completely off and almost entirely silent.

It was a scary and stressful time in my career. But I began a new chapter in my parenting the day I “lost” my voice.

For starters, I learned what Vijaya learned when Padma was around the same age my children were then—that our kids can totally step up when they have to, even if they’re very young. Post-surgery, my husband downloaded an app on my phone that enabled me to communicate without speaking. I would type, “please go clean your room,” for example, and the kids would laugh at the robotic voice that followed. But let me tell you, my kids were amazing. Once they understood that I had to stay quiet, I suddenly didn’t need to say much—even through the app! Not only did they voluntarily help with tasks around the house, there was no bickering. In fact, it was so peaceful, I had to reflect on just how much of the household noise had been generated by none other than me!

In my silence, I pledged that once my vocal cords healed I wouldn’t fuss or raise my voice anymore. Okay, so I’m still working on that, but it hasn’t been a total fail either! If my kids are on a different floor, I either physically go get them or use our digital assistant (hey, Google!) to broadcast my request at a normal volume. Yelling changes the energy in our home—and it’s never going to be good for my voice.

As I healed, I was continually wowed by my kids as I came to see how our children can meet our most challenging moments—and letting them do so not only makes our trials easier to bear, it makes our kids stronger and more self-sufficient. It builds skills and breeds confidence. Vijaya and Padma are proof that those benefits last a lifetime.

During my weeks in recovery, I also learned that the invisible “S” so many of us moms proudly wear on our chests might just be a reminder to be Still sometimes. I’ve always been on the move, basically convinced that every task I didn’t do myself, or micromanage, wouldn’t get done well. Wrong. The minute I put my Superwoman cape (and ego) on pause, I learned that I can sit down or drop a ball once in a while and things won’t fall apart. In fact, some things will get better—including me, when I tend to my needs and allow myself a minute to catch my breath.

Being quiet also forced me to look inward. While the kids and my husband were “holding it down,” I was able to recharge and check in with my feelings in a way that I never had. I didn’t realize it but, by the time I had surgery, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I had worn myself out trying to keep my health and my job from caving in while keeping the kids’ lives from missing a beat. We often debate the “selfishness” of self-care. But that old airplane advice about putting your oxygen mask on first in an emergency totally translates into everyday life on the ground.

Dealing with health obstacles and challenges of almost any kind can be lonely, but my entire family shared in my experience and we all learned from it. As with Vijaya and Padma, the lessons we learned probably differ, depending on who you ask. But one of the most meaningful lessons for me has been understanding that, sometimes, a mom speaks loudest by not speaking at all.

One thing I learned from my mother is, always lean on your faith but not just when all is well. She taught me at a very young age that the same God of the mountain is the God of the valley. I’m forever grateful that she planted those seeds.

—Craig Melvin, cohost, The Today Show