Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years With Mom
By D. G. Fulford with Phyllis Greene
Hyperion, April 2008
Heartwarming and honest, author D.G. Fulford shares the meaning of family in her roles as a mother, grandmother, and adult child in Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years With Mom. After being away from her Midwest hometown for more than 20 years, she makes the choice after her father's death to move back to Ohio to become her mother's closest companion—a change that unexpectedly becomes the most fulfilling decision of her life. Thus, Fulford becomes the "designated daughter"—"the sibling who would try to take up the empty space that had always been filled by Dad."
This true story takes you on a genuine, emotional journey. Through doctor visits and funerals, to lunches at Bob Evans restaurants and bouts of unexpected laughter, mother and daughter nurture a special understanding and friendship. Though the two are different in many ways—the newspaper is neatly stacked in one house, and spread all over the unmade bed in the other—their core values are the same.
Fulford's mother, Phyllis Greene, adds her thoughts at the end of each chapter. "The time we spent together as this journey began was a confirmation that we were on the same wavelength, that the mother/daughter relationship was more nearly a friendship of contemporaries," she says.
If you're like me, you'll laugh and cry as both Fulford and Greene become frustrated and angry at their circumstances, yet keep a sense of humor throughout. ("You look good, but I look like a hundred-year-old hooker," Greene says, after a mother-daughter makeover at Macy's.) This encouraging story speaks to family relationships across the board.
