scribblechic

The neighbor woman leaned precariously over a nondescript blanket pulled across a corner of shade, the bend of her torso and angle of her head drawing me to a curious intrusion. I marveled at the balance of tension and peace, stillness and movement in the lines of her posture. As I lingered over the image tiny arms and legs batted at the sky and I remembered the shape of my own memories.

In much the same way my body sways to the distant cry of another child, I still feel the warm weight of my children against empty arms. The tired muscles and eyes heavy with sleep are ghosts of days long past; a story I tell without the ache of remembering. The phases of hopeless frustration and anxious uncertainty are only words in a hollow telling.

Then a stranger lost to an extraordinarily unexceptional moment rustles memories that scrape against the tenderness of slumbering emotions and everything past rushes into the present until this moment is not big enough for all that I remember. Today and yesterday feel jumbled in disarray and I cannot untangle grief and joy from the knot in my heart that catches in my throat.

It seems impossible that in motherhood I have found guidance in lessons taught by a woman with whom I shared mostly poorly concealed contempt. Discontent strangers trapped in an expectation of family, there was no warmth in my stepmother’s care; each kindness felt forced and every displeasure an unavoidable inevitability. I wonder, looking back, if she felt the same unhappy impossibility in my company. Two people bound by chance without choice.

Over the years I have forgiven so much unhappiness, it seems irrelevant in the scope of my contentment. Instead the beautiful fragments of old lessons remain as evidence of a time shared. Wisdom sticks to my choices even as I forget the shape of daily grievances.

I may never see this woman again, but if I were to speak my gratitude into the wind it would be this:

Thank you for teaching me to be humble in acts of generosity. You taught me monetary donations and acts of service were private kindnesses whose good was tarnished by the garishness of bragging. To this day I am uncomfortable with attention relative to charity. I donate my time outside the spotlight without expectation of acknowledgment. I do not play martyr to my commitments, but give freely and privately what I can. My children have similarly learned to give with an intrinsic sense of joy outside an expectation of recognition.

Thank you, too, for alerting me to the vastness of my irrelevance. I once thought it cruel that you would undervalue my worth and ability, but over time I have come to appreciate the blessings of inadequacies and the thief of comparisons. I find myself centered in a place of humility for imperfections and pride in tasks well done. My success is scaled against myself rather than others. In this same way I have come to mother my children to grow into their potential with a self-awareness for their abilities and selfless appreciation of others; they are not mired in hollow trophies of false accomplishment or burdened beneath unrealistic expectations of perfection. My children move in a world of strangers whose gifts and challenges unite them in diversity.

It is a funny thing these legacies that linger, lessons we sometimes learn too late. I wish you could know that there was some good in our time together, that after the teenage angst there was grace.