motherhood

There is a very powerful blogsite out there about losing your mother. It's called The Motherless. What rose up in me when I first stumbled across it was a combination of sadness and fear. Sadness, for my pooooor ol' self-pitying self, but more potently, more sharply - fear. That I might not be enough for my own most beloved children. That someday they might themselves feel my absence, might feel themselves motherless. Might feel, as I do, that in the bitter end, there are no mothers in the world. That what you do, what you have to do, is be your own mother, because the dream of Mother we all have is too much for any one woman to fill, to endure.

For years I have circled around this. I have had need a mother, a lap to cry in, a rock to cling to. I have had need the pillow of that love to sleep in. I have longed so desperately to be loved no matter what. My dear, tired, struggling mother is not an unconditional kind of person. So again and again attempts to wring this from her went awry. In the end, I concluded that there is no mother, no Mother, that what I need, what I am seeking to get from this illusion, I need to hand myself.

Then I became a mother myself and suddenly I could feel, I can still feel the pulling, the desire for me to hold all their fears in my hands and make them flowers, the terror when I frown, the relief when I smile, the terrible, overwhelming power I have to make it rain or shine, their fingers clutching at my heart, begging for another hug, another kiss, not to leave, not to be gone, ever, to hold them and to keep all that might harm them at bay. And I am just a person, with my own moments of weakness and moments of grace. I cannot always make a monster into daisies. I sometimes snap at nothing, cry over spilt milk, pour a drink before five, wish desperately to sit on the toilet alone, to howl "go away go away go away."

Yet I try. I will be mother still and always, although I know I must fail, that my failure is in fact a gift to them because it allows them to stand independent. That the imperfect me allows them to be imperfect them. Still, oh I want them to know in whatever part of them is deeper than their hearts that the pillow of my love is always soft and fresh and smells like summer.