A few days ago, the DC Poetry Project sponsored an open-mike reading at an eatery where I happened to be helping the owner. I liked some of the poetry, but it is what I heard afterward that fascinated me: stories of mothers and their recalcitrant daughters.

The tales of fathers and sons are ones we usually hear. Even the stories of single mothers and their sons are not news to our ears. There is no shortage of literature describing the relationships between mothers and daughters, but I had not previously been privy to much of what I heard the other day.

After the poetry reading ended, a few of the participants sat around engaging in conversation, one subject easily flowing into another. This one included a few young women talking about what happened to them when, as teenagers, they had the temerity to attempt to buck their mothers. These were all dynamic, successful, professional women who seemed to bear no enduring damage from their experiences. Instead of rancor, their stories were told with great hilarity.

One young woman talked about mouthing off at her mother one moment and, in the next, being pinned against a wall, her throat gripped in the tightening grasp of a woman she no longer recognized, thinking “Oh, God, I’m going to die!” Everyone listening to the tale could not help but laugh along with her as she told it.

Her sister recalled being out past curfew with friends and determined to rejoin them once she went into the house to retrieve something she wanted. As her friends waited for her outside, her mother greeted her calmly at the door and made it clear to her that she would not be going out again that night. She tried to make it clear to her mother that she would, indeed, be going with her friends. What came next, she never saw coming. With what appeared to be no change in her tranquil demeanor, her mother picked her up and body slammed her on the living room floor. Stunned, the young women said she was just grateful her mother was kind enough to have not done so in front of her friends, who wondered why she never emerged again that night.

All of this reminded another young women of what happened to her whenever her “attitude” triggered her mother’s default mode: a hand to the throat that lifted her from the ground.

None of these women found any fault in what their mothers had done; the fault was their own. They weren’t mothers themselves, and did not speak about how they would respond under similar circumstances. Is the past always prologue?

My only familiarity with such stories came from my wife, who adored her mother. Even so, she describes herself as an occasional pill, drama queen and thorn in her mother’s side. She says her mother usually had the hide of a rhinoceros, but even she would, at times, succumb to the urge to put a mouthy daughter in her place: a slap to the face, a blow to the ear.

I don’t remember any of my women friends relating similar tales (not to say they didn’t have them to tell). When queried, one told me about the moment in her life when that sort of punishment came to an end. She believes every woman remembers that moment in their lives. Hers happened while standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes as her mother beat her with a belt. She acted as if her mother weren’t even there. This was eerily similar to a childhood friend whose “moment” came while sitting at her vanity brushing her hair. She never missed a stroke, ignoring the strokes of her mother’s belt. My wife remembers grabbing her mother’s hand to stop her.

Since the poetry reading, I’ve taken an informal poll of young women coming into the eatery, asking them about their experiences with their mothers. Most of their relationships seemed to coincide with the pattern followed by my mother and sisters.

I had no memory of my mother going through any of this with my sisters. As a little girl, one was full of an energy that sometimes exhibited itself as a contrariness requiring the occasional spanking; when she began holding her breath until she passed out, there were no more spankings.

Their adolescence seemed drama-free, so, to test my memory (and theirs), I telephoned a sister as well as my mother and asked them to recall those teenage years. Apparently, my memory was correct. My sister said none of them ever gave my mother a reason to jump on them. My mother said she was blessed in never having to go through any adolescent tumult with any of her daughters. The one time she had to object to anything involved my youngest sister, who was a young married woman at the time. Separated from her husband for a brief period and staying with my parents, she thought it would be okay for a male friend to come to the house and pick her up. My mother said she and my father told her that as long as she was a married woman living in their home, that sort of thing was not okay. Boring, right? Thank God for boredom.

I’m also thankful for those more eventful stories. Some of the poetry that day was good, but I had to point out to the young women that the passion with which they told their tales means there is great poetry to be found in their stories of warrior moms.