MAMA

Coming down to the home stretch. Mom turns the big six-o in two weeks. I can't believe it. I was talking with a friend last week (over triple scoop chocolate chip cookie dough in way-too-big waffle cone) about mothers --- what we know now and didn't know when we were growing up. She was telling me about a conversation she'd had with her husband about women and orgasms and sexual pleasures and whether or not her mother had ever discussed matters of sexuality with her. I wasn't surprised to hear the answer: No. Neither did my mother. Nor any of our friends' mothers. We shared our stories and laughed about the similarities in our lives: neither or our mothers ever sat us down and had that "woman talk." My mother never taught me how to size myself for a bra (number is the width, letter is the cup), never discussed anything that had to do with my physical development into a woman. The message was simple and it wasn't up for discussion or debate: keep your dress down, pants up, go to college and don't think about bringing any children in my house. When I had my babies, Mother never sat me down and told me how much my life was going to change. We laughed of course, at my low lying belly (Girl, you look like you've got TWO basketballs in there) and about the labor pains (Chile, it's the worse pain you'll ever have in your life, get ready sister) and the endless periods of wakefulness, but never did she tell me, with seriousness, how my Life would change. How irrevocably different things would be. How no matter the fact that one day they would be grown and gone off to live their own lives, I would forever worry about them as if they were two days old. She never told me about the synchonicity of things: that at the same moment my children were born I would forever see the world through different eyes; that I would become capable of being both pessimistic and optimistic at the same time---believing and doubting in the same breath. She never told me about the ways in which children cause you to both rise and stumble; how children, in many ways both good and bad, are a mirror of yourself. She never told me how many friends I would lose along the way---either by virtue of other women not having children, having children and not sharing my similar beliefs in how children should be raised, or simply how lives take on different meanings and roads inevitably divide. Mother never told me how different my marriage would be; how my Spouse would love me more but in a different way. Mother never said how I would see their eyes in his everytime I looked at them and that I damn sure better love the man deeply that provides the seeds for my future--for he will be a forever presence. (Thank God I do). Mother never said that my body would take on amoeba like shapes: that one day I'd feel like Carrie (SATC) and the next day like the blob on the underside of the ocean. Mother did not tell me how hard it is to balance the need for comfort (read: sweat pants, tee shirt) with the desires of a husband that wants his wife to look good and desirable. Mother did not tell me. Mother did not tell me that I should pull down my chandelier because Spouse and I would rarely get a chance to swing from it again.


What my friend and I discovered also, the catalyst for *her* decision to self-publish her collection of poems and short stories, is that she never recognized her mother as a REAL person. A person with dreams and hopes and desires and sexuality and interests and regrets. Did she not recognize it or did her mother fail to reveal it? For me, my mother didn't reveal it. I knew that she had a passion for designing and sewing her own clothes, she loved gardening (and still does, a magnificent artist!) but I never knew what her dreams were, her deepest hopes (other than professional success, home ownership and self-sufficiency for my siblings and I), her sorrowful regrets. Most of her inner life seemed a closed door. Off limits. My friend, who successfully published her book five years ago, says that outside of birthing her two girls, self publishing has been one of her greatest achievements simply because it serves as a chronicle of her life; a recording of her hopes, her dreams, who she IS as a person --- beyond the role of Mother.


We rode home together, she and I, Kemistry playing softly on the radio, agreeing about how we want to change that cycle--- that closed-door-ish-ness. I shared with her, too, that one of my greatest fears is drowning in the minutiae of Life such that my children do not know me. Sure it's great to read them stories and give them hugs and kisses but the greater gift, I would argue, is giving them a sense of knowing you as a person. Seeing you as a real person who sings in the shower, paints, designs widgets, and moreover, a person who has feelings. I find this especially important during those teen years when children, especially girls, feel like "You just don't understaaaaand!!". Which is why I refuse to work full time. There's nothing that I need so badly that I need to sacrifice driving my kids to school, picking them up, accompanying them on field trips, sitting down in the evening to talk about their day.


Recently, I started two new journals (I now run four separate journals). One is for me, one for my daughter, one for my son, and one is my gratitude journal. Once a month I journal in my daughter's journal and once a month for my son. The two others are ad lib. I'm trying to wean from this blogging and do more in my written journal. My gratitude journal is just that: entries that reflect what I am grateful for. My own self therapy and my way of keeping the Funk Feelings at bay. There is always something to be grateful for and the down days are a good time to go back and read that particular journal. Oh, and one other journal that's ad lib is my Wish Journal. In there I paste pictures of what I hope for. I record the way my next home will look, the ocean at my back door, pictures of Cuba and Costa Rica where I want to visit ---- all of the things I wish for. But the journal entries in my children's journals are like direct letters: where they are at that present moment, which tooth has fallen out, what crazy thing they've said that made me and Spouse laugh. This month I wrote to my son the hopes I have for him as he becomes a man. My hope that he will live a life of honor, a life of fearlessness. My hope that he will be a man of his word because, after all, what good is a man if he cannot stand by his word? Writing in these journals is my way of ensuring that they know me long past the time that I'm gone; that nothing will come as a surprise when I am eulogized. My plan is to give each of them their respective journals along with their scrap books on the night before their weddings (if they don't marry then I'll find a suitable time).
These journals and my decision to self-publish my book of poems and short stories is much the same (which incidently, I've had to rework the ENTIRE Butterflies story b/c I've seen where it doesn't work, falls flat, and could stand revision. Can't send work out in the world that isn't ready).


So Mother's sixtieth birthday is fast approaching and I'm the official party planner. Not a party party but a formal dinner with cake. I'm looking for a nice seafood place since Mom is *not* into Thai and Ethiopian and all the other kinds of foods I'd choose. I'm cool with it. I've also asked each person to write a personal letter to Mom -- short and sweet -- about what she has meant to them over the years. The blurbs will be read over cake and coffee. I will take photos of each person and put their picture in an album and their blurb on the opposite page. Something for Mother to treasure.

What I realize too is that our mothers raised us with the tools that they had. They gave us, my friend and I, the best that they had to offer. They gave us more information about being Strong Black Women than about sexuality because in the sixties and seventies, that's what was most important to them. That is the framework of their lives. They raised us the best that they knew how. And that is good enough.

So the charge is not for me to worry about what was missing, but to search for the answers to pass along to my little lady and for her to do the same for the generations to come. And hopefully, just hopefully, we'll know more about ourselves with each passing generation.


Be Good.

ANGEL