Why would you interpret the writer’s mother throwing all her things away as she left for college as the writer hating her mother? It sort of sounds the other way around to me.
Let’s look at the way she described her mother’s actions...
>>The day I left for university, with my father driving me, we had not completely backed out of the driveway before she had filled the rubbish bins outside the house with my old school uniforms, boxes of the poems I had written, and other cherished possessions — now just clutter to be cleared away.<<
The picture she paints is of her mother feverishly hauling her “cherished possessions” to the trash without raising an eye to wave goodbye to her. Do you really think that if she truly loved her mom, she would describe it that way?
Maybe you don’t know too many of the lib-boomer women who, no matter what a mother did, found constant fault with her. I’ve got a sister like this. My mom wasn’t perfect (none of us are) and she was far from a touchie-feelie huggie mom. However, if you listen to my sister describe my mom and the stories of her childhood, you would think that she lived in a different house from the rest of us with another mom.
I see drama queen. I see resentment for her mother. I see a woman that was just as happy to give mom the boot because she felt mom booted her too. She hated her mother. Read the article. There is not a bit of love in the description of the lady she dehydrated to death.