What always felt the most real for me, based on my personal experience, is how Donna appears to be a more nurturing mom to people outside her own children. Maybe performative reasons, or there's a bearable distance between these other kids, where a wounded mother like Donna can pretend to be okay.
For Donna, We see this infectious mother-child relationship with Richie, where they're boisterous with each other. With Pete, she expresses love to him. The Faks love her, and Tiffany invites her to the wedding. Notice that Donna takes in the children without moms, Richie, and Tiffany's broken relationship with her mother. Maybe the Faks have a fractured family.
Some are worried about Donna meeting Sydney. But when Sydney and Donna meet, there will be some comfort on both sides. It's because she's better with 'children' other than her own, and it will be a scene that will serve Sydney's absence from her mother. Sydney needs guidance about Carmy, it's not a business decision that she can talk to her father about because feelings are involved. Donna knowing Carmy personally while at times having motherly wisdom is what Sydney needs.
Another thing Donna understands is the challenge of being the woman who has to do everything on her own while the father of the family is absent. Something Carmy keeps doing is checking out. More wisdom on that front? Sydney needs to hear the gritty about a family business- because Donna, like Jimmy, knows balancing work and family can be confusing and difficult, yet it is filled with so much love.
...I'm excited to see how the dialogue unfolds during the Sydney and Donna meeting.
Hmm yes yes I resonate with this very much for Donna, intuitively but as you point out it’s certainly textual in the show that better sides of Donna come out with Richie, Tiff, Pete, the Faks. I mean that’s a lot of moments of Donna with multiple other kids when you add it all up. And now Sydney—the trailer alone gives enough to see that we are getting yet another moment where Donna opens up/provides something to a person who is adjacent to her children.
And I feel it’s so true in general that we can mother (parent) other kids better than our own sometimes. We have distance, more perspective. And kids are also sometimes more open to other adults than their own parents. This is why we need a village! Aunties and uncles and elders and even stepparents that come in later can provide kids with a different model.
But with the Berzattos it’s like Donna knows she messed up but she can feel out how she’d like to be with these other kids. IMO maybe not so much to pretend but to try it on or to find relief? Or if we want to put on darker glasses she is getting back at her children for “abandoning” her by being closer with these other kids. But truthfully I don’t really believe that, it feels like it’s a genuine way where she finds herself being the person she wants to be or the person deeper inside without all the protective responses and defenses she has with her kids. Especially with Pete—I feel like she is most honest and vulnerable with Pete.
