My mom cries every time Esther and Lady Dedlock meet as mother and daughter for the first time. I have watched her tears fall over the years as she rewatches it and I never truly understood why she felt so deeply for those two women. I have always been able to sympathize so I believed it was my own deep feeling that if I lost my mother for twenty years or so, I'd miss her so terribly. I thought my mom felt that way. But now that I'm older, now that I have learned how she grew up and who she was before I was born, I see that my mom cries when they meet because she yearns to meet with her mom as a daughter too. Maybe she feels she never lost her mom but that she has always been there, hiding in plain sight but never attaching herself to my mom as a maternal woman would. Nancy has never searched for her eldest daughter, lost or not. I think she hopes that one day her mom will come to her, just like Lady Dedlock, with tear-filled eyes and open arms, with an expression that shows she understands. I could be wrong about her reason for crying but I'm certain that she cries because she feels just like Esther. She must also feel like Lady Dedlock, since she's such a caring and nurturing woman, and a mother of two daughters herself!
I can't believe I ever thought I didn't love you, mom.
