It was odd to hear my mom compare her relationship to the Drapers’. My parents split the household duties, held jobs in teaching and systems administration and pursued their interests in meditation and aikido. What I was coming to understand, though, was that my mother did not come into the world fully formed in 1981, when I was born, that there was a complicated and somehow painful life that predated me.

Now she was also dealing with a diagnosis of ovarian cancer and endless rounds of chemo. I was eager for more time with her, eager to know her better than I did. I convinced her to watch “Mad Men” with me. It gave me a new understanding of what it had been like to live in the world the show conjured. How when her roommate came back to Boston College after her marriage and honeymoon, the priest started class by welcoming her back, addressing her emphatically as Mrs. Then he said, “I’d like you to write an essay on celibacy being a higher state than marriage.” Her roommate walked out of the class, head held high. “But it affected all of us,” my mom said. At home, things weren’t any better. My grandpa, a proto-Don Draper who liked to say that he’d moved up “a whole class” on his own effort, chided my mother for her tomboy look: “I worked my whole life so I wouldn’t have to wear overalls, and you’re wearing them?”

Given these stories, I expected my mom to identify with the women on the show, but even to her they seemed from another time. “The part of me that relates to Betty isn’t there anymore. I relate a little to Don. The wannabe in me wanted to pursue my talents, to be excellent like he is. But before I could do that, I had to heal all these wounds about being a woman.”

Despite my hints, I didn’t get the Joan dress for my birthday. I went back to the store and bought it myself. I haven’t worn the dress yet. I’m not sure I ever will.