Sorry, Dada

LIZ IVERSEN’S essays have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and elsewhere.

WHEN MY TODDLER daughter’s personality first began to emerge, I was relieved. She was strong-willed, boisterous, funny. She was not like me. She would grow into a confident woman, not waste her childhood in shyness and self-doubt.

In many ways, I was the opposite of my own mother, a Filipina immigrant who stayed home with my brother and me for the first few years of our lives. She cooked, cleaned, even sewed handmade clothes. I, by contrast, was a working mother, proud of the careerwoman image I presented to my daughter. I was an infrequent cook (thank god for my husband), and somehow,