Mom, daughter take relationship to a new degree
They will receive master's degrees today from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
By MARCUS FRANKLIN
Published May 8, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Lauren Friedman and her mother, Nancy, do a lot together.
They cook, so that Nancy can pass on family recipes for chicken soup and pot roast.
They shop as Lauren steers her mother away from drab threads and toward dazzling color combinations.
They both live in Clearwater, and walk their dogs together - Lauren's black Lab Scooby and Nancy's white Maltese Willi.
They also go to school together. They used to, anyway.
Today, Mother's Day, the two will graduate together from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
For the mother and daughter, who entered master's programs a semester apart, the past three years have expanded the boundaries of their relationship. Lauren says she learned lessons she plans to carry with her into her new career. For Nancy, attending graduate school with her only daughter in some ways led to a reversal of roles.
"My life would really be lacking something if I didn't have this relationship," Nancy Friedman said one recent morning sitting outside Davis Hall with Lauren.
In 2002, with her son Michael away at college, Nancy Friedman suddenly found herself with more time on her hands. Friedman, who got a liberal arts degree "30 years ago" from Alfred University in upstate New York, manages a mentoring program at Gulf Coast Community Care in Clearwater. She decided to go back to college and get a master's in social work.
Around the same time, Lauren, now 27, was a University of Florida advertising graduate doing internships that weren't leading to a full-time job. Her mother - who doesn't want to reveal her age - encouraged her to return to school, leaving USF brochures in the bathroom, on Lauren's desk and pillows.
"I didn't want to spend the rest of my life waiting on tables," said Lauren, who worked at Courtside Grille at Feathersound, where her uncle is a co-owner, while completing a master's program in education.
Though enrolled in separate programs, mother and daughter found themselves connected in new ways.
"When I started, I was very insecure and lacked confidence," Nancy Friedman recalled.
Doing research for papers made her uneasy. She didn't know how to properly format the papers in computer programs. PowerPoint was especially challenging. Classes in statistical analysis "petrified" her.
"It was frightening to me," she said. "I'd type a paper, and it'd disappear, and I'd go into a panic. She knew how to retrieve it," she said referring to her daughter. "I had somebody who could show me without judging me. And I really appreciate that," she said as she rested a hand on Lauren's shoulder.
"They made me feel like the little engine that could," Nancy said referring also to her son Michael, from whom she sought help over the cell phone while he was at college in Gainesville. He graduates in August.
Her children often told her, "You can do it."
For Lauren, showing her mother how to do things she assumed everyone knew helped her acquire patience - a trait that will come in handy for the Pinellas elementary students she'll begin teaching in the fall. Her patience, she said, she probably inherited from her mother.
Now they exchange information - Lauren relating tidbits on dealing with elementary school kids, her mother sharing information about mentoring children.
Martin Friedman, Lauren's father and Nancy's husband of 32 years, watched the two as they worked - sometimes separately, sometimes together - through school.
"I'm sure it brought them closer," he said. "Just the experience of the education brought them closer."
Marcus Franklin can be reached at mfranklin@sptimes.com or 727 893-8488.