to my grandmother + my mother: my mom is a great daughter-in-law to my grandma Beverly. as she tells the story, mom was checking in with grandma after taking her dad to the doctor.
"where have you been?" grandma asked.
"I took Ed to the doctor," my mom answered.
"I guess you do a lot of things nobody knows about," she said.
trying to remind her she used to the same, my mom replied, "that's what mother's do."
my grandma said, "you're a nice mother."
isn't that cute?my mom and I were driving home from Provo about 3 weeks ago. we listened to this
podcast about parenting,
Didn't Ask to Be Born, about a mother who loved her daughters so much, she saw them as extensions of herself. as babies, she saw no separation between her and the 2 of them. as they grew up, she seemed to maintain this view/love of her children. when she divorces and moves the family from Phoenix to Oregon, these 2 oldest daughters go haywire. drugs, ditching school, and ultimately running away--at the ages of 13 or 14. I paused my iPod and looked at my mom: why? how could that have happened?
my mom, not surprisingly, knew the answer. she said that by seeing your children only as an extension of yourself, you are disallowing them to be individuals. a child is a person, she explained, not just a little you.
of course, I thought. if there was one thing I can say my mother taught me, whether I know it consciously or unconsciously, it was to be myself. and I never felt that just being me was any less than I could possibly be. I feel I've explored every possibility I've ever wanted to, every personality, every version of myself, internally and externally, because my mother taught me to. all I have to do is be me.
and I think it was unconsciously, actually. because something happened to me when I came home from school this year: I began to see my parents as people, not just parents. I'm not sure how much I can generalize my personal experience, but I would guess most people undergo a similar paradigm shift. my parents are people--just like me. my mother always taught me find myself, and to be myself, but I never once guessed that maybe she was finding herself too. perhaps she is struggling to find her place in the world just as I am. when I finished a course in marriage and family relations last semester, I doubted whether my parents' efforts in rearing my siblings and me were mindful. did I just sort of...happen? I asked my mom if she ever read anything on parenting before she decided to teach me everything I would ever know about the world. she scoffed at me. of course she did. of course! how could I think otherwise? but it's all part of my childhood paradigm...I never really thought twice about my parents being people. but as I thought about my mom's efforts to let me spread my wings--for lack of a better cliche--I realized that she also made efforts to spread hers. she is great at being who she is. she fulfills every potential and explores every version of herself. and she does it with such grace.
last weekend, sisters Melissa, Kate, and I (sans
Emily, on 6-month
hiatus in Mexico) searched for the perfect (or even suitable!) mother's day gift. worst week of my life! we struggled so badly to find something just right, something reasonably priced, or something at all. our search was stupid and in vain. we decided to resort to handmade items, maybe some photos later. this
poem sums everything up for me:
The Lanyard {by Billy Collins}
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word
lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
some good mother's day reading:
Adelaide + Sharilyn,
Marta + Benji
I can't remember when I've been so stuck on something. I also can't remember when this hunger started. but I am desperate to go camping. on Saturday, my family and I went to Springdale in the foot of Zion to hear my dad play in the symphony with Richie Ramone. (who knew?)
