I wrote this last Friday:
I always forget that this weekend can be hard. Maybe thats what is behind the insecurity bubbing from the bottom of my belly. A pattern, a cellular memory of all those years of Mother’s Days. Maybe thats why I am itching to be only in my body this weekend. On the river, on the river, on the river. The years between and the years within. Im not sure what she thinks but I think she thinks that my life is better off without her. I suspect that’s what she has always believed. That’s how she was able to leave and live with herself. But thats a cop out. It always was.
Can one ever quite learn how to mother ones’ self, completely?
It’s a huge weight to bear, like motherhood itself, I suppose. I guess its why I can’t ever quite let go of the hope that she’ll come back. Why part of me is still stuck waiting. Trapped in a home without a heart. How excruciating it has been to carry on without it.
This is the cry that was rumbling from deep down in this rejecting uterus. Its the sadness there that makes me not want to carry another human in it. I don’t want to bear another human into this. Thank God for the cat on my lap and for the albums I have for this (Bridget Kearney~ Won’t Let You Down)
I forget that this weekend can be hard. It’s Friday and I am glad I have remembered. Glad I have remembered to take a break. To get a little space, to spend time with myself today. To sing and clean, spend some time in my heart. Its really the only place to go, though my mind would like to go to the what ifs and the wondering. It’s tempting to go back.
I want to scoop the baby I was up and just take things from there. I look into my young mother’s face. Her tired eyes and swollen breasts, too big for her child’s frame. Long beautiful hands wrap easily around me in gentle contradiction. Her blond hair picks up the light. Her knee easily propped on a pillow, she looks at once comfortable and not in her new role. The picture is intrusive and you can see it in her eyes.
I wrote this today:
I had the best Mother’s Day.
I felt loved past the point of what I could comprehend or expect or feel like I did or didn’t deserve. I was loved past myself, past the point of over-flow. I felt so loved that I could hold both the sadness of not having a mother and the love I have for my mother at the same time. You can love someone who doesn’t love you, or who isn’t able to love you in the way you need to be loved, I’ve learned. Maybe she loves me or she thinks she does. Maybe she doesn't, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the love I have for her. Because thats how love works.
I remember many adults that came through my life as a child, questioned that. “How could you love her after what she did to you?” I understand now that sometimes love has limits. Maybe they were trying to protect me? When she was back in my life for seven or so years a couple years ago, I loved her like a little girl. I loved her like a small child who depends on an adult for their sense of security and so would do anything for them, even wait an entire lifetime. I just wanted her to come back and I loved her at the expense of myself. I loved her and trusted her completely, like a child who doesn’t know the costs of trusting someone who doesn’t understand the consequences of breaking it. I was still the keeper of her burdens then, and our relationship was an inappropriate expression, like walking on broken glass, too awkward and bright and dishonest to look at directly. I hadn’t grown up. I hadn’t felt the rage I needed to feel. I didn't know how to protect myself. I hadn’t healed. I wasn’t a woman, then.
I can love her without expectation of a response. I can give her love, in my mind without compromising my heart. I think I am starting to forgive her.
I spent the weekend on the river. I spent everyday on the river from Thursday through Monday. I felt loved all those days and none more than on Sunday. My lover made me a breakfast fit for a mother of queen cats. He came on the river with me for the second full day that weekend. I thought about all my friends who were mothers and their children who are growing up loved and I wished them a happy day. I heard a song, I thought about my mother. I sent it to her and then I moved on with the day. I moved on down the river all day.