like a hungry runaway*
This morning my partner sent me down the street to pick up some things for breakfast, because neither of us was thinking about what would happen on the way.
I rounded the corner past the church, its bells pealing for Mass, kids running about, and promptly stumbled into a gauntlet of a solid dozen cafes and restaurants and lunch carts all packed kitchen to door, all their signs cheerfully chalked to announce their specials for Mothers' Day Brunch. It seemed like every storefront had something to say on the matter, or was closed so they could be home to say something else more personal.
I've been trying to avoid noticing today, to skip past all the greeting cards and helpful internet reminders and e-mail from Planned Parenthood telling me via cute video about how much I should appreciate my mother, the best in the world. Last night's crying jag made it clear that this was not a workable strategy. This is not a fun day for me. This is not about picturesque brunch.
When you're barren and motherless, Mothers' Day is a calendar mark to dread.
I will never carry a baby under my heart and above my hips. And the person who carried me, we don't talk any more. There's too much hurt. There's too much poison. Here we are at the day where I'm supposed to idealize that, where I used to call every year and pretend things were other than what they were. This time, it's different. This time I'm not pretending. The rest of my family probably had a lovely spread on the table this morning, but I wasn't there. I may never be again.
I've been trying to hide from this day as best I could, but, as when I was a child, there's nowhere to hide, is there? There's nowhere I can go that the people who made me aren't with me, in the end, nowhere that who they are and what they did isn't encoded in my bones and carved into my corneas. I already knew when I was little that even hidden in a closet or up a tree, nowhere was safe for long, if nothing else because I was there, and I brought it all with me. When it's in you, when it is you, when it's where you come from, you bring it everywhere, stinking in your hair like rancid cigarette smoke, like a red-eyed thing hanging behind your neck and reading everything over your shoulder. I don't know who I am without it. There has never been a version of me without it.
Last year in March I climbed a mountain alone, and sat at the peak trying to put away the whole human world for a while so I could see further, but I brought it with me. My veins and shoes and food wrappers and eardrums were all human, and all came into that place. When I tried to strip away everything and get to the bottom of myself, near the bottom was a terrible, paralyzing fear, infecting all my decisions. That fear spoke in a voice I recognized all too well. Sometimes it wore a face that I recognized, too. Always there. I couldn't get away from where I came from. I brought it with me.
You can't run from where you start. You can't hide from it. You can stop picking up the phone, change your address, change your name, but you'll find it chalked onto the sandwich boards of every cafe in your neighborhood, find it in your inbox as a reward for your volunteer service, and you will find yourself looking over your shoulder every minute, afraid to see in person the people who are always there anyway, but no longer made of smoke and mirrors and hurt but flesh and blood and audible voice, ready to dismantle every shrine you've built in yourself.
I am trying to come to terms with this day. Trying to find a way to make it positive for myself instead of a stab-wound. I think, well, I will never carry a child inside, but I may be a mother someday. I think, well, what about metaphors, about cultivation and vegetable gardens and art, about making new things and nurturing them? I think about the wonderful mothers in my life, who aren't my mothers but who surely count. I think about all the people who helped mother me even if we never shared blood, all the people who gave me somewhere to run to, who showed me a different way to be. I think about elders in my community worth honoring. I think about spiritual mothers, universal mothers even, trying to reach further out into something sacred and more wholesome.
I think of someone dear to me who reminded me that, as Audre Lorde said, we have to learn to mother ourselves. But it's hard to know the best way to mother yourself when your only model is so full of hurt, and is so full of hurt because her only model in turn hurt her. Learning to mother yourself in a new way, when you don't know what the safe and healthy way to do it even looks like, is a tall order.
Mothers' Day is no picnic when you're barren and you're motherless. But I'm not really either of these things. I am fertile, though I cannot give birth, as soil in which to grow things. And I have a mother. If I didn't, this would be a very different kind of hurt, but I do have a mother, one who shaped me, one who is integral to who I am and have become, who is never not looking over my shoulder whether I like it or not. The key is not in the fiction of being motherless. It's in learning to deal with the mother I have, or had, and what she is, now, in me. It's in healing the mother in me so I can mother myself, and so someday when there are children in my care I can do right by them. I don't know how to do these things, but maybe Mothers' Day is a good place to start. My Independence Day, or Dependence Day, or something, something about saying right here and now that even when you ran away, even when you changed your name and address and phone number, you cannot hide from what is written in your ribcage and seeping to fill your muddy footprints, sketched on your palms and wrapped around your throat. If you cannot hide, you have to figure out something better to do.
For all of us learning to mother ourselves, if not a happy Mothers' Day, a hopeful one, one where we give ourselves more chances. A day to remember the good days, the moments of respite. A day to learn to grow something new in ourselves, and start to be brave enough to loose its seeds on the wind. A day to support the mothers around us who are, as our own did, doing the best they can. A day to believe that they, and we, can do it differently.
Where we come from is always in us, and we take it everywhere. Maybe we can learn something from it better than what it wanted to teach us. Maybe someday we can go home.
*props to my friends Coyote Joe and Miss Grace, who you should know better
I rounded the corner past the church, its bells pealing for Mass, kids running about, and promptly stumbled into a gauntlet of a solid dozen cafes and restaurants and lunch carts all packed kitchen to door, all their signs cheerfully chalked to announce their specials for Mothers' Day Brunch. It seemed like every storefront had something to say on the matter, or was closed so they could be home to say something else more personal.
I've been trying to avoid noticing today, to skip past all the greeting cards and helpful internet reminders and e-mail from Planned Parenthood telling me via cute video about how much I should appreciate my mother, the best in the world. Last night's crying jag made it clear that this was not a workable strategy. This is not a fun day for me. This is not about picturesque brunch.
When you're barren and motherless, Mothers' Day is a calendar mark to dread.
I will never carry a baby under my heart and above my hips. And the person who carried me, we don't talk any more. There's too much hurt. There's too much poison. Here we are at the day where I'm supposed to idealize that, where I used to call every year and pretend things were other than what they were. This time, it's different. This time I'm not pretending. The rest of my family probably had a lovely spread on the table this morning, but I wasn't there. I may never be again.
I've been trying to hide from this day as best I could, but, as when I was a child, there's nowhere to hide, is there? There's nowhere I can go that the people who made me aren't with me, in the end, nowhere that who they are and what they did isn't encoded in my bones and carved into my corneas. I already knew when I was little that even hidden in a closet or up a tree, nowhere was safe for long, if nothing else because I was there, and I brought it all with me. When it's in you, when it is you, when it's where you come from, you bring it everywhere, stinking in your hair like rancid cigarette smoke, like a red-eyed thing hanging behind your neck and reading everything over your shoulder. I don't know who I am without it. There has never been a version of me without it.
Last year in March I climbed a mountain alone, and sat at the peak trying to put away the whole human world for a while so I could see further, but I brought it with me. My veins and shoes and food wrappers and eardrums were all human, and all came into that place. When I tried to strip away everything and get to the bottom of myself, near the bottom was a terrible, paralyzing fear, infecting all my decisions. That fear spoke in a voice I recognized all too well. Sometimes it wore a face that I recognized, too. Always there. I couldn't get away from where I came from. I brought it with me.
You can't run from where you start. You can't hide from it. You can stop picking up the phone, change your address, change your name, but you'll find it chalked onto the sandwich boards of every cafe in your neighborhood, find it in your inbox as a reward for your volunteer service, and you will find yourself looking over your shoulder every minute, afraid to see in person the people who are always there anyway, but no longer made of smoke and mirrors and hurt but flesh and blood and audible voice, ready to dismantle every shrine you've built in yourself.
I am trying to come to terms with this day. Trying to find a way to make it positive for myself instead of a stab-wound. I think, well, I will never carry a child inside, but I may be a mother someday. I think, well, what about metaphors, about cultivation and vegetable gardens and art, about making new things and nurturing them? I think about the wonderful mothers in my life, who aren't my mothers but who surely count. I think about all the people who helped mother me even if we never shared blood, all the people who gave me somewhere to run to, who showed me a different way to be. I think about elders in my community worth honoring. I think about spiritual mothers, universal mothers even, trying to reach further out into something sacred and more wholesome.
I think of someone dear to me who reminded me that, as Audre Lorde said, we have to learn to mother ourselves. But it's hard to know the best way to mother yourself when your only model is so full of hurt, and is so full of hurt because her only model in turn hurt her. Learning to mother yourself in a new way, when you don't know what the safe and healthy way to do it even looks like, is a tall order.
Mothers' Day is no picnic when you're barren and you're motherless. But I'm not really either of these things. I am fertile, though I cannot give birth, as soil in which to grow things. And I have a mother. If I didn't, this would be a very different kind of hurt, but I do have a mother, one who shaped me, one who is integral to who I am and have become, who is never not looking over my shoulder whether I like it or not. The key is not in the fiction of being motherless. It's in learning to deal with the mother I have, or had, and what she is, now, in me. It's in healing the mother in me so I can mother myself, and so someday when there are children in my care I can do right by them. I don't know how to do these things, but maybe Mothers' Day is a good place to start. My Independence Day, or Dependence Day, or something, something about saying right here and now that even when you ran away, even when you changed your name and address and phone number, you cannot hide from what is written in your ribcage and seeping to fill your muddy footprints, sketched on your palms and wrapped around your throat. If you cannot hide, you have to figure out something better to do.
For all of us learning to mother ourselves, if not a happy Mothers' Day, a hopeful one, one where we give ourselves more chances. A day to remember the good days, the moments of respite. A day to learn to grow something new in ourselves, and start to be brave enough to loose its seeds on the wind. A day to support the mothers around us who are, as our own did, doing the best they can. A day to believe that they, and we, can do it differently.
Where we come from is always in us, and we take it everywhere. Maybe we can learn something from it better than what it wanted to teach us. Maybe someday we can go home.
*props to my friends Coyote Joe and Miss Grace, who you should know better
Labels: body politic, on the pavement, remembered


11 Comments:
Happy Mother's day to you. I believe you will be a mother, and you will be wonderful at it.
You might consider taking something from founder of Mothers' Day, from her intentions, rather than what's become of it. Lesbian Dad posted the proclamation, which I happened to open in my reader after reading your post. A poem with the line, "The sword of murder is not the balance of justice," is more likely than not to fall into your good graces.
The first one is hard. It may get easier with time.
Though I respect and acknowledge the pain caused by being aware that you are among them, plenty of women are mothers who are incapable of bearing their own children. It does not make them (or you) less.
Love.
I dreaded this day for some very different reasons, but I was hoping you would post something. It sounds strange, but it gives me hope.
You will be a great mother when you have kids. You're one of the few people I've known who have ALWAYS wanted children, and truly enjoy them.
This was a beautiful albeit sad post. It made me cry. I'm very close with my mother, but it seems your relationship with your mother is akin to the one I have with my father. He has hurt me so much over the years, scolded me and bullied me for being me, when, in fact, much of my behaviour was determined by a personality disorder I most likely inherited from him, and which caused him to not realise how much he was hurting me.
This is why it sounded familiar, when you wrote of how your mother was hurt, too. Sometimes it's frightening how much a chain of hurt and injustice can continue, for reasons I cannot begin to guess - mostly ignorance on part of the bystanders, though, I suppose.
I hope Mother's Days in the future will be happier for you than this one has been.
Rose,
Primero, gracias, as always for your words and your life.
Your post made me reflect on the lines we draw between mothers and non-mamis and the ways in which those labeled mother's don't always do the best job while those not labeled mother's nurture and cuidar/care in ways that birth so much love and support.
En eso mujer eres una mami. The path of mami'hood involves caring for ourselves as well as others and coño it's hard, because of our histories, as you pointed out.
::muah:: te quiero mamota and I hope to see you soon
ugh...i wrote this whole comment and then somewhere in my lack of techie skills it burned away...damn...
in short what i wanted to say was:
mothering is a verb. not a noun. and that this post is sumptuous and fed me and nurtured me more than my mothers own words have in a long time. and thank you.
you know, I often wonder at the importance we place on the role of mother--we cant be everything for our kids. as somebody who is fucked up and has fucked things up *often* with my kids--I know this. but as somebody who has a similar relationship with my own mother--and who knows the desperate need for somebody to please for the love of GOD--take care of me....love me, show me how to love myself...
sometimes--it's like I'm a seperate person watching myself, my kids, my mother--I understand all the pain from everybody, I understand everything and I can love all of those women--but I don't know how to help them understand how the world is hurting them and thus hurting their relationships with each other. knowing what is wrong--AND that I can't fix all of it, and frankly, I don't want to fix all of it...it has brought me peace. and allowed me to direct my energy into more helpful, healing things. things that could make things different for my daughter, for her daughter, for everybody. but it still hurts some times--to look at those women, those kids, all struggling in her own way...
much love my dear friend XOXO
~~ur dark haired bespectacled friend from the AMC who is hoping u don't have too many friends fitting that description!!! :-)
thank you for sharing this.
*HUGS YOU SO HARD*
hey friend, I love you. Thank you for your text the other day- I got it and then I accidentally hit the buttong that "cleaned up" all my texts, so I lost your number again. so I will say publically here it means a lot that there's another no-mama/ well we both have mamas but they're crazy and abusive and we don't talk to them but they talk in us/ girl out there. that would be you. your words are rockstar wonderful, as always. xoxoxoxo
I'm sorry I missed this on Mother's Day.
I remember dealing with that same truth, that I would never carry a baby, and how much it hurt - and Mother's Day stings a bit every year for that reason.
hugs and love.
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