Motherself

It is very easy to hold our parents into the light and tell ourselves how we were ruined. The truth is not so simple. Life lifes, we do what we do and our parents do the same. My mother was and is a remarkable woman and I've spent years trying to come to terms with that.

I've been working lately at trying to get under the known and find this woman. I'm trying to do this because I don't see much of her anymore and I can hear the fatigue in her voice and her writing. My mother is the gonzo dream somebody once said I might be. To read her is to be transported to whatever she is experiencing, at lightspeed.

My mother is eating the entire bag of M&Ms at once. My mother is the freight train that just took out your front yard. My mother is a navy blue suit and high heels in a 911. My mother is 140 mph on two wheels. My mother is the horse breath and the horse mind and the horse soul and body. My mother is dog shows and dressage rings. My mother is the ballet or Rocky Horror (take your pick) at midnight. My mother is ginger muffins at daybreak before heading to work because her daughter weighs 80 pounds at 5'6".

My mother is often elsewhere which equates, in the mind of the child, as not here.


Once, when I was maybe twelve years old, I was very, very sick. Very, very sick means I had a fever above 104 and woke up that way in the morning. My mother had to make a choice. Back in the seventies two things had not occurred yet (and I'm not sure they have yet). The first is that fathers still had nothing to do with children. The fact that I was sick had no bearing on my father's schedule. I'm not even sure he registered the fact. The second is that no matter how talented or necessary, women did not stay home from their jobs to care for sick children. As a matter of fact, many working women never even acknowledged having children if they meant to keep their jobs and did anything past administrative work (that was NOT what momma was doing, momma was writing code and disseminating information, same as I do today).

Momma felt my forehead, pursed her lips and then told me to stay home. She went to work. My little brother, he would have been ten, popped a thermometer in my mouth because he said I was all red. He had trouble reading it and I was no help but eventually worked it out. He called Momma at work. Momma said, give her three aspirin and make her drink lots and lots of water. Baby Bear did just that. He also didn't go to school that day. He sat by my bed and fed me aspirin and water all day long.

By sevenish, when Momma came home, my fever broke.

We all read this and think of this in terms of the child and we wonder, how oh how could that child have survived? Well I have to tell you, the child was perfectly fine. No joke, perfectly fine. The mother, though, the mother. What hell did she live through that day and many others?

I've had a few like that but nothing like what my mother experienced. Nothing. I don't know how she did what she did.

Remarkable.