A Mother is…
Love, as you know, is a difficult subject.
My second baby entered this world on October 6th, just 10 minutes before midnight. I called my mother during labor, when things became too much. This labor was f*cked, so much pain seesawing through my body every minute and a half. I had her on speakerphone as the phone rested on my chest. She was quiet, likely anticipating the next contraction, as was I, as was my husband. The quiet told me how worried she was. I needed her the same way I needed my fetus baby. For him to exit not only quickly, but safely. For her to somehow fix this and make this end. The labor and delivery room is a fascinating place; three generations in one room, glued together by the thread of sufferance. Her emotional distress, my physical pain, my baby’s induced exit.
We can't cover our children from pain, as much as our will pulls us to. Sometimes I think I’ve brought children into this world for the sole reason of tolerating pain. But as it pertains to them, I can only hope it will mold them into fantastic, tender people. My children are both the source of my pain and the medicine that relieves it. Perhaps it’s the same way for them and they don’t even know it yet. Perhaps the mother's wound passed over to them the moment they traveled down my cervix and was forced to breathe life on their own, reluctantly, maybe unwillingly. Brought to this earth for my own vanity.
Coming home with my second was no different than coming home with my first. I entered my house as if it was a house I no longer lived in. I looked at the things I’d use as if the person who used them was now dead. I’d look at picture frames that embodied an irretrievable past. My body was half numb, half deflated, fully sunken into the new reality that my mind still had trouble grasping. This infant baby is soon heard crying a foreign cry that filled up the house, reminding me of our separation. I could not translate these feelings. So instead, I looked at my mother and cried.
We sit outside and admire the orange moon and oscillate at its beauty. The baby is sleeping and thus I feel lighter, like I can put the domesticity in me away, put my feet up and hold a cold can of beer. We’re sitting in fold-out chairs amidst the shiny grass because we have no furniture. I look at everyone else as if to seek permission to grab a slice of pizza and eat it. The silence is not the heavy kind it usually can be amongst this group. Maybe because we are admiring the moon, convinced its beauty should be something to admire, not something to fear. Ignorance is the sticky thick coating we cover ourselves in, the sap that keeps us together, so that we can get by amidst each other's company. I can fit in this mold for now, it’s only temporary. Shove down my feelings the way I’m shoving down this pizza. This is a family.
One never knows what all the silence in this group can lead to. What are we carrying that weighs us down so much? Like the sky, we grow heavier by the minute. Like the earth that finds different breaking points every day, quietly swallowing our poisons, it sometimes leads us towards a false facade of beauty. I think this is what a family is too. We just shove pizza in our mouth and admire the dewy grass below and the moon that’s on fire above us. In silence. We are prettier with our mouths closed. Words have too much meaning when they are spoken. So we continue to sit together without making another sound.
Nature is silent until it’s not. I was raised in a place with hurricane seasons. I experienced Hurricane Andrew in 1994. We sat around in silence waiting. Until it was loud, violent, life-threatening. Until we ran to a closet to shut it out, anxiously waiting for the quiet to come back. When it did, everything was different. We aren’t ready for everything the world has to tell us.
I sit in the fold-out chair by myself in the backyard and try to quiet the loudness of the silence. I see a cardinal, a rabbit. I see the ivy being swayed by the wind. The sun is out, the blue sky is beautifully laid out above me. Suddenly I am a child again, wondering when the silence will break. When it gets so loud we feel like we have to shut it out.
Language can jar a wound. Open your mouth. Remove the shame from your chest. Talk to me. Before the world unleashes her own language of death.
My mother is beautiful, wild, hurt. Physically I resemble her now, but as a child I looked more like my dad and I’d always wondered why I couldn’t look more like her. Perhaps that’s how the mother's wound begins. At such a vulnerable age I saw her as a woman in control. Wishing I could be more like her, feeling shameful that I won’t ever be good enough. Perhaps my first feeling of shame. It’s hard to pinpoint the origins of these things. My mother, the prototype Mother. But In this present time I’ve never felt more like her, something I once wanted and now I digress. I ask myself why? How could this be when I’ve taken all the steps to go against this? I talk like her, discipline like her, lament of all the aggressions taken against me, just like her. When I smile, people don’t see me, they see my mom. They see my mothers wound.
As her daughter, I’ve seen her silence take many shapes. Where does she go when she goes quiet? It’s always when we’re in some sort of ambivalent territory. It brings me to question my selfish, narcissistic self. So much growing up to do, so much learning to go. But I refuse to do these things. I like being an asshole, it suits me. This will be the last time. Recurring words I tell myself as my mom pours salt into my mother's wound. Sometimes the silence is so thick it's inevitable a pair of eyes start to well up. She’s just doing her best.
I’m learning about this empty house and the greenery in the backyard. I was told the Ivy only needs maintenance once, maybe twice a year. It’s hard to grasp that, the idea of such little maintenance. There are things that are so annoyingly independent, and why did this trait skip over me? What happens in this moment when I need my mom but don't want to open up the mother's wound? Can we have one without the other, can they be separate entities? Like two islands parallel to one another, floating in a sea of desperation, but keeping their distance. I’d like to have my mom and leave all of that baggage on the island next door.
So I became scared of her quiet, because if it went too long it would take her away to another reality. We lock eyes and they spew out emotion. There’s so much depth in our eyes, so much language that's locked up behind these eyelids. The iris says “You fucked me up but I still love you.” Love, as you know, is a difficult subject. And now, carrying the torch of Mother in my ungrateful hands, I’m taken to that quiet almost far too often.
Too many amazing one liners to quote. But yes yes yes!
"My children are both the source of my pain and the medicine that relieves it." Yes.