What do we know of
motherhood when we don’t
even know how it shaped
our own mothers,
changed their peripheral views,
altered their hips and dreams and
ovarian nightmares?
We know them only as
our mamas, not the women
who existed before.
“Oh your mother, that one,”
people might say, as if
that other woman she used to be
was so mysterious, so enchanting.
I could never have met her
or her ambition, her dreamy
teenage eyes and her slim waistline.
They are strangers to me in this
life I have that was birthed from her
suffering and shaking andÂ
passion.
I see only the tired eyes,
the wanting arms extended.
I feel only the touch of gentle
hands on my forehead, searching
for fever, for permission to worry, for
connection when we’re no longer
tethered by umbilical cord.
Dad says she was stunning,
hitchhiking down the street in only
a little red bikini, all wet hair and a thumb
pointed to his pickup truck.
I can’t imagine this woman I know
as the bender of rules; she is only the maker
of rules, of my body, of me.
In life, I did the opposite
of what she told me to do.
It is this game we play,
mothers and daughters:
her offering me her wisdom,
me trying to prove I was different,
break down walls in my own way.
In death, I wanted nothing more
than to be everything she wanted
me to be, do everything she
would have told me to do.
Can we wish to be good mothers
both in spite of, and because of,
our own mothers?
motherhood when we don’t
even know how it shaped
our own mothers,
changed their peripheral views,
altered their hips and dreams and
ovarian nightmares?
We know them only as
our mamas, not the women
who existed before.
“Oh your mother, that one,”
people might say, as if
that other woman she used to be
was so mysterious, so enchanting.
I could never have met her
or her ambition, her dreamy
teenage eyes and her slim waistline.
They are strangers to me in this
life I have that was birthed from her
suffering and shaking andÂ
passion.
I see only the tired eyes,
the wanting arms extended.
I feel only the touch of gentle
hands on my forehead, searching
for fever, for permission to worry, for
connection when we’re no longer
tethered by umbilical cord.
Dad says she was stunning,
hitchhiking down the street in only
a little red bikini, all wet hair and a thumb
pointed to his pickup truck.
I can’t imagine this woman I know
as the bender of rules; she is only the maker
of rules, of my body, of me.
In life, I did the opposite
of what she told me to do.
It is this game we play,
mothers and daughters:
her offering me her wisdom,
me trying to prove I was different,
break down walls in my own way.
In death, I wanted nothing more
than to be everything she wanted
me to be, do everything she
would have told me to do.
Can we wish to be good mothers
both in spite of, and because of,
our own mothers?
