What We Carry | Maya Shanbhag Lang

Mother-daughter relationships, always complex, are rich territory for memoirists and novelists, and this memoir is no exception. It's excellent. I love stories that draw out stories that we hear, that we want to hear and stories we tell ourselves and others that may or may not even be true.

Maya Shanbhag is the daughter of Indian immigrants on Long Island. There are a few others characters in the book that provide nuance to Maya's story--her father, brother, husband and young daughter--but the book is really about the relationship with her mother, a gifted psychiatrist and someone who Maya believes devoted herself completely to her children. The curtain around this story when Maya has her own daughter and suffers from severe postpartum depression and suicidal thoughts. But when she pleads for her mom to join her and her husband in Seattle, her mother rather cryptically but firmly refuses. It's a short time later when Maya and her brother discover that Mom is suffering from Alzheimer's. This is where the story gets interesting. Maya and her husband, having moved back to the east coast to be closer to family (specifically her mother), bring Mom to live in their home and Maya becomes Mom's primary caregiver as she declines. She also learns that much of what she believed about her mother was not true, or at least was not what she understood to be true. She's nudged along in this understanding by a perceptive therapist and an athletic trainer. And she draws connections between how she was mothered, and how she's mothering her own daughter.

Lang's narrative is spare, direct, nuanced and not at all sentimental. Short chapters keep the story moving along and build momentum and generate a strong, visceral impact. The writing is spot-on. The story is anchored by a fable she hears early on from her mother, about a mother who's crossing a river with her infant son and reaches a point where she has to save herself or the baby. This tale is a particularly effective way to show Maya's personal growth as she navigates being a daughter, mother and caregiver.