home
March 18, 2012 § 3 Comments
A place within and in between, constant and ever changing; more solid than beams and bricks and yet at once intangible. My mind and heart are wrapped around the word home today. This week I have been preparing to visit my mother while taking care of my little girl, a quiet week with pockets of business and gentle reminders that home is a moment of understanding and recognition between two people of something shared but unspoken.
The past few weeks I have watched my vivacious seven-year old side kick fight off a variety of irritating cold and flu symptoms. Yesterday a fever robbed my little girl of her smile and she drifted into a deep sleep; I was restless without the playful antics and dramatic declarations that punctuate my daughter’s days. Today, as she tugs joyfully at my patience with stubborn independence our house feels more like home.
Like mother, like daughter. My mother and I tug tirelessly at one another’s patience with the same predictability. We are as similar as we are different, stubborn certainties mingled with unspoken insecurities clutter the space between hugs and harmony. I have learned to appreciate the complications between my mother and I as both universal and unique; sore subjects and shared respect hallmarks of our journey as daughters and mothers in a sisterhood of womanhood.
This week as I prepare to share time with my family in the infinite space of home that ties us together with heartstrings, I am folding clothes into suitcases and unfolding old memories. Celebrating and giving thanks for my daughter and my mother.
no message
September 9, 2011 § 1 Comment
My mother will call to remind me to call. I missed a call. Busy with random distractions, I barely registered the absence of a message until the day had passed. The following day, at my first quiet opportunity, I called my mother to collect my message.
My mother was robbed.
The words before and immediately following my mother’s news were drowned out by waves of shock. The voice at the end of the line was hollow, gone was the sound of my mother’s smile and sense of humor. The damage unseen is significant.
Miles away and scared, my mother is lost in her home. I imagine the stairs my children climb, the chair in which my mother knits, the table where we share Thanksgiving dinner and wonder at the unseen guest that walked freely uninvited.
There is no comfort, no words to undo this act of unkindness. What was taken is secondary to the sense of security that has been stolen.
I keep calling my mother to remind her to call.
nonsense
March 12, 2011 § 1 Comment
Most days my world echos the hazy, transient space of a dream moments before consciousness. Like Alice, having fallen through the rabbit hole, my responsibilities tower precariously around me making me feel small and lost. I wander through my day absorbed in discovery and chasing after an ideal.
Housekeeping and meal planning, parent organizations and children’s activities are a never-ending tea party. I return to the table each day a guest of routine. I marvel at the limitlessness of motherhood, each moment of our days precariously tied to the promise of empowering confident, capable children through the riddle of simple tasks familiar across generations.
I squeeze myself into moments steeped in tradition, like unfamiliar games whose rules have been replaced with unwritten expectations. I stumble into awareness, reveling in discovery as new questions emerge.
Responsibility follows me like a grinning cat perched in amusement over my curious fumbling. I wonder if my mother and grandmothers felt lost or overwhelmed. I welcome each new mother I meet to this place of beautiful nonsense where almost everything means something, some things nothing, and others everything.
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