When you say "mother" or "father" you describe three different phenomena. There is the giant who made you and loomed over your early years; there is whatever more human-scale version might have been possible to perceive later and maybe even befriend; and there is the internalized version of the parent with whom you struggle--to appease, to escape, to be yourself, to understand and be understood by--and they make up a chaotic and contradictory trinity. [...]