Why does Sal's mother want to know about her past before she was a mother and a wife.

Sal's mother seems to be searching for her identity and feels trapped in not knowing who she really is yet. She deeply loves her husband and daughter but seems to feel that in being wife and mother to them she has lost her sense of what she is to herself. She goes by the name Sugar but longs for people to use her full name Chanhassen. She loves nature and feels a connection to Mother Earth which she has definitely passed down to her daughter.