My mother told me not to start shaving my legs without telling her. I disobeyed. One late November evening when I was 11, I noticed a razor, rusty and purple, beckoning to me in the shower.

All my friends’ legs were hairless. I was last, embarrassed, and tired of waiting.

It was an hour before Thanksgiving dinner, and 10 days since my mother had died of a brain tumor. My leg hair was beginning to curl, and I longed for sleek shins. With shaky hands, I ran the razor over my legs.

Later, sitting between my grandfather and uncle, stuffing myself with potatoes and pie, the tiny cuts I had made on my legs bled beneath my jeans.

I now handle a razor with assurance, but blood still drops whenever I tweeze, pluck or wax. My mother, a pediatrician, once explained, as I squirmed over my spaghetti at the dinner table, that there would also be monthly blood. However badly I want to be beautiful, which is sometimes extremely and sometimes not at all, beauty takes work, it takes blood.

I remember only a few of my mother’s other instructions. Always judge a man by his shoes. Never let anyone tell you that being a man is better than being a woman. The only advantage men have over women is that they can pee standing up.

I am frightened by how few of these declarations I can recall. I often fear that some earth-shattering, soft-uttered wisdom left her lips long ago and I missed it, that the cloudy lens of childhood keeps me in the dark. I don’t forgive my memory for failing to anticipate this predicament.

My mother was effortlessly cool. Dark sweaters, no makeup, unbrushed yet somehow unruffled hair, the occasional dangly earring, an air of confidence and tranquillity. I attempt to copy her approach — the rings on my fingers are all hers, her Chanel No. 5 (never used) waits in my dresser, brushing my hair is a rarity and I think of my refusal to learn anything about makeup as effortlessness.

But not thinking requires thought, and not preparing requires competency in the art of winging it. I do have hair, so I must think about what to do with it. I put on my socks, shoes and ill-fitting pants and wish my eyelashes were longer and my hands smaller. I talk to my friends about our breasts and birth control pills and bad posture. I wonder when it will all become effortless.

I imagine my mother practicing and honing her brand. In college, I bet she let her ideas and opinions speak for her, raising her hand in class often enough that her professors remembered her name. I picture her walking to class or work through Central Park, perfecting her stride, sauntering at the right pace with the right posture, turning heads.

If her mother, my grandmother, wanted to take her shopping at Ann Taylor or Eileen Fisher, she probably said no, she was cool with her corduroys. If her great-aunt Elsie sent her some perfume for her birthday, she might try some on and decide to wear it regularly because it smells good, if a little old-ladyish, just as I sometimes dab the scent from my great-aunt Joyce onto my wrists because it smells good while also smelling like an old lady.

I know (because people have told me) that she used to listen to the Rolling Stones on vinyl. I bet she listened to the moans of Keith Richards on “Memory Motel”: “She got a mind of her own and she use it well. Mighty fine, ’cuz she’s one of a kind.”

I bet her friends thought of her when they heard those words. She was mighty fine, one of a kind. Over time, I try to see myself in Keith’s words, too.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, my friends and I were sure Roe v. Wade wouldn’t last. Preferring a day or two of cramps to the possibility of a child, I called doctors’ offices to book an appointment for an IUD. My roommate came with me, and we walked to the doctor in a downpour, sharing earbuds, water flooding our shoes.

“She can’t come in with you,” the nurse said.

I went into the room and lay on the table. A fluorescent light beat down as the doctor spoke. I squeezed my own hand, craned up my neck, eyes wide open, and realized I had never felt more like a woman or more like I needed my mother.

In one of my mother’s only Facebook posts, from 2011, she wrote, “Watching Thelma and Louise with B. Wow.”

Their convertible soaring into the Grand Canyon, a wild feminist image of defiance until death, floored me and lingered in my mind for years. It was a strength in friendship, and it was the liveliest death I had ever seen. They blazed through the West, never letting dirt or blood become a roadblock.

They were running from husbands, boyfriends, rapists and the police, but it was more like they were running toward something better. I called my best friend and recounted the film in detail. Later, she bought me a “Feminist” tank top. I figured being a feminist meant being lively, feeling alive. What else could my mother have been trying to show me?

My father tells me stories he remembers and acts as both parents in my mother’s absence. He recently rediscovered “Uptown Top Ranking,” a reggae song recorded by Althea and Donna, two Jamaican teenagers who messed around in a recording studio in 1977 before watching their song soar to the top of the British charts the following year.

My father played it on repeat in the car and explained its origin to anyone who would listen. During a festive cocktail hour, he put it on the stereo and danced.

“They were just two teenage girls,” he said. “They made this song as a joke!”

My face got hot at the suggestion that anything about Althea and Donna was a joke. “Why do you say that? Because they’re young and female?”

He sighed. “Why are you playing the victim? Why not just be a secure, strong woman?”

I let his words sink in. To be strong and secure, I had to channel as much liveliness as Althea and Donna, as Thelma and Louise. But I had no hit record, no convertible. I went upstairs and pulled on one of my mother’s sweaters.

At the dinner table, I hoped that my silent tribute would actualize my strength. My father noticed the familiar fabric and looked at me with gloomy eyes. The soft stitches felt like a flimsy shield. I wanted a sturdier one.

My family used to call music my mother loved “Mom’s slow music.” Elton John, Lucinda Williams, Paul Simon, The Velvet Underground. “Tiny Dancer” playing on the highway reminds me of her feet up on the dashboard, her knowing smile, her bad singing voice.

I search for spirit in her tastes — it’s there, but not wholeheartedly vivacious. Or maybe I just don’t remember correctly. If the best role model I have fades around the edges, my definition of womanhood becomes malleable.

I cannot base myself solely on splintered, hazy memories, or on the liveliness of one woman who is no longer alive. I must base my womanhood on more influences than one. My aunt, a journalist. My high school guidance counselor, who had the same cartilage piercing as me. She put me onto the Foo Fighters and fed me warm advice.

When I first met Elliot Page’s Juno, I bought Red Vines and Sunny-D to be like her. Now, I revere Amy Winehouse, who was at once a fierce Jewish girl and tortured soul. I watch Lorelai Gilmore, who talks so fast and has such blue eyes and red lips that I grow jealous. I listen to Lauryn Hill, the queen of raw emotion.

As Maggie Nelson writes in “The Argonauts”: “‘The mother of an adult child sees her work completed and undone at the same time.’ If this holds true, I may have to withstand not only rage, but also my undoing. Can one prepare for one’s undoing? How has my mother withstood mine? Why do I continue to undo her, when what I want to express above all else is that I love her very much?”

My mother never saw her adult child. Our relationship is unfinished. I never get to undo her work; I only long for its completion. But maybe every woman reaches a point when holding her own hand is the best option. Maybe every woman must supplement, add fragments, force femininity until it feels complete, effortless. Until she has enough of herself to express — above all else — that she loves her mother very much.

Attention College Students

We are pleased to announce the sixth Modern Love College Essay Contest. What has love been like for you during these difficult times? We want to know. Go to nytimes.com/essaycontest for details. Deadline is March 27th.

Becky Miller is a sophomore at Barnard College.

Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.

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