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2006-11-21 - 8:29 p.m.
In that photograph of the child and her mother there is a wide space between them and wide space all around them, and all that space seems to be filled with silence. The child looks as if she might have cried but is not crying. Her eyes looks down intently to the ground... She has that look of desperation on her face, that she had tried to speak and given up. In the mother's body is a different kind of helplessness. She stands with one hand on her hip, another shading her eyes from the sun, looking toward her daughter. Whatever her daughter tried to say was not something she could understand. And her posture might be righteous, or even angry, if there were not a clear longing in it. As if the child's attempt at speech had touched an old buried place in her, and so she lingers, half turned to her daughter, half turned away, knowing she wil never grasp that feeling and thus already having given up, yet not able to turn from it. And they stand there forever that way, locked in silence. from Susan Griffen. Woman and Nature. (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1978), pp. 111-112. Quoted in Paula J Caplan's Between Women: Lowering the barriers. Okay, so it was inevitable that some day there would be a MOM entry. Well, here it is. When my parents were here over my birthday (here being Fresno, my birthday being early November), lots of exciting stuff came up. I'll tell this as respectfully as I can, focusing on myself and the process and not disclosing much about my mom, for respect of her privacy. But I'm sure some stuff will come up about her, and it will be general and likely generalizable to most of our mothers. Please approach what you are about to read with the sensitivity with which I attempt to write it. My mother and I are very different people. If the whole family were in counseling, I would be the Identified Patient -- the one with a different lifestyle, different goals, the one who is less understood. I have no problem with this, it just is. I lie. While it just sort of feels like my role in my family, it definitely skews how I view myself in relation to others. Being a polyamorous bisexual International Student in a Bible Belt city does little to help this feeling of alienation. But I'm working on it -- working on feeling connection and community, working on my communication in such a way that I feel heard and respected and seen. It's important to me that people know ALL of me, and so I rarely bullshit or smalltalk or make pleasantries, even when those socially-acceptable habits would make me more comfortable too. I'm a bit stubborn in my search for honesty and authenticity. Cool. Okay, so all that being said... Because mom (and dad) and I are all so different, sometimes it's hard to talk to one another. Like, coming out (for the 4th time) to my parents about the polyamory was rough, particularly since -- having done it before -- I thought it could be casually mentioned while I actually talked about what I wanted to say. So much for that. And sometimes my mother will phrase things in such a way that I don't understand what she is saying, and I will ask her to explain herself, and she will say something about not being able to be herself, or my being too intellectual and always needing her to explain, or that I'm trying to argue with her. It's hurtful, because really I'm just trying to respect and hear her feelings and thoughts so I can talk to her. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just smile and nod and pretend I understood everything she said. I know she tries to do that with me sometimes, but she definitely trips when things come up that she views as morally different and/or potentially hurtful to me. So we talked about this stuff. For like 2 hours. It was intense and amazing, and I have no idea whether it will foster any long-term change, but it made me happy at the time, and I think we both felt heard. Okay. So I'm reading Kaplan (as above), and I'm wondering why it is that women are so undervalued in our culture that someone as amazing as my mother can think her opinion doesn't matter to me just because I don't agree or don't understand. It's pretty mind-boggling. So few of my friends have had baby girls recently, and I really want to pay more attention to the ways that we treat baby girls (and baby boys) such that the girls can grow up thinking they are only valid/valued as nurturers for their sexual object choice. And then I think of the one baby girl I do know fairly well, and how her parents have allowed her to explore and imagine and be anything and anyone she wanted to be, and how at 4 years old she is independent and strong and funny and caring and a beautiful human being. She exhibits amazing reciprocity in her interactions. She is a joy and a wonder. Her parents don't even correct people when they mistake the baby for a boy, and they refer to her and other children as kids or babies, not girls or boys. And it is amazing how much this freedom in her upbringing has allowed her to become such a well-balanced little human being. I really want to be present in the lives of more children, to take active part in their lives and to help open their minds to the breadth of experiences they might seek in life. It appears that my living situation in January will be with a friend and her two daughters, and in February onward with two male friends, one of whom has a 10-year old son. I am SO excited. Our culture asks us to put so much blame for our neuroses on our moms. Well, here I am saying that yes, I've got some fucked-up ideas about my mom and our relationship -- and I really think that the expectations reflected onto me, i.e. my understanding of what my parenting ought to look like -- hindered my ability to question why my father played such a small role in my life until I was an older child. So while I'm deconstructing all this bullshit about my mom, I'm also very conscious of the fact that my father was not really asked to be nurturing until I was much older -- that he was nurturing as a form of recreation and not the fulfillment of any role-expectation -- and so we don't have the same kind of baggage. We also don't have the same richness to our relationship. I adore my father, but in truth I rarely think of him as someone who would hold me if I were curled in a ball crying my insides out. I can see my mother in that role, judging and being weird all the while, but still being there. My father -- he'd take me out for omelettes and chocolate cake and listen. And I would think of that as enough, because that is all he's ever been called to do. And yet they were both my parents. So why such a difference in their roles? I have such high aspirations for a more egalitarian relationship when I eventually have kids. Or else just do it myself or with some other moms. Whatever. Hope for the commune, whatever that ends up looking like, whatever genders and relationships are present. I don't really know what I'm trying to get at here. I know my parents did the best they knew how. I know that they did a wonderful job. I'm not questioning their parenting skills, which I would have to say are high up on the list, because well, damnit, look how I turned out -- a bitchy, smart, sassy, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, fiery, productive, community-oriented woman. I really like who I've become. But the question this is bringing up for me is more... It feels like there's a different-colored lens on my eyes as I look back at my childhood. It feels like a large part of it is missing in my memory, and instead I've held onto all these bullshit little moments. And I want to know how that happened. Everyone's heard the story (well, not everyone, but lots of people) of how I almost died when I was 2 because I didn't feel like staying in my crib. Crawled out, fell on my head, my heart stopped beating, had a grand mal seizure. My mother performed CPR and got my heart started again. Why does everyone know this story, the one (unavoidable) moment of negligent parenting in an otherwise happy childhood? Why has it been repeated to me so much, like the mantra of my all-giving grandmother whose husband, had I ever met him, I would have been destined to love and hate for the advantage he took of her graciousness and giving heart? Why? Why are so many of my memories of crying? I know my childhood was beautiful. I know there was ice skating pushing a chair so I didn't fall, there was hot chocolate, there was cutting down a live Xmas tree every year, there was picnics and outdoor pools and neighbourhood kids and my pictures on the fridge and beautiful desserts and pancakes before church on Sundays. But these are not the first memories that pop into my mind -- the first that come up are of my brother terrorizing me, of sitting at the kitchen table not wanting to eat my brussel sprouts, of being spanked, an embarrassing night when my mom drove a friend of mine home and I burst out into spontaneous tears because of the song that she was singing to on the radio... Part of me worries that I just started fucking too early, and that somehow that's eradicated so many of my more positive childhood memories. And part of me doesn't want to victimize myself through narrating my life that way. I just feel like I would love to go to a hypnotist and ask hir to remind me of my childhood, all the good and all the bad, so my vision wasn't so one-sided. I just want to remember everything -- not just being grounded or hiding behind a chair in the den after being told by my babysitter to go to my room because I was bad. Is there something in the being-brought-up-female condition that causes me to judge my parents, my mother, more harshly than if I were a boy? Did I get less nurturing from them because I was a good student and a well-behaved child until I became a hellion little slut whom they didn't know how to deal with? What is that about? I hope reading this book will illuminate some things. I hope I can get a handle on it. I'm sure it sounds like I'm overanalyzing, but I spend my days thinking about family systems and so that's just where I'm at at the moment. Thinking what to tweak in a family to make things healthier for everyone. So what needs tweaking with my family, and with me? --mopheaded is a muddled middle-class menagerie cum life-crazed feminist anarchist
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