Power and Proximity
The problem with parents, no matter the problem, is that they are so powerful. They create us. The mother is especially powerful. In the beginning, when we are most easily impressed, we need someone to hold us up, emotionally and physically. As they do this, they whisper in our ear, and we understand their perspectives as reality. Their mantras echo day in and day out. Often, we are hypnotized by their vulnerabilities. If our mother’s arms are weak, we must acclimate. Perhaps we don’t move too much. If they suffocate us with their grief, we must find a way to breathe in the spaces between their breaths. If they never pick us up, we must learn to stop asking or dedicate ourselves to a forever waiting.
The last one is common. I see myself growing old in the waiting room of the bus station. I am waiting for permission to stand up and climb onto the bus. I want to look out the bus window and see her waving lovingly as we start rolling along. As I sit and wait for some indication that that could happen, my lethargy and bitterness grow. I am on the bench by the ticket kiosk as dust and vines envelope me.
Mother is, for a time, all-powerful. Everything comes to us through her. Everything. And don’t be fooled, the disempowered are mighty. Need is a formidable force. We will tend to what she did not receive elsewhere. She doesn’t even have to ask. We are born psychic when it comes to her.
And this is true even once the conditions change and we no longer require help standing up or feeding ourselves. We are born navigating her navigation. We are immediately lost in what she did not learn.
The first time we leave her, we usually leave ourselves behind simultaneously. Out in the larger world but carrying her like a wet rag doll on our backs, sometimes in our chest or gut. She wanders the neighborhood of our unconscious, and we run into her at the bodega, the mosque, the George Washington Bridge. We don’t recognize her initially. Not through the veil.
Reconciliation allows for a different kind of leaving. Reconciliation involves opening our gaze to all the fields behind her, behind us. Where do we come from? Where did breath become trapped? Where did tears drown the babies? Where did war shape destiny? Where was bigotry the building block? What was the special taste of fear?
And what extraordinary life-force pushed through to become us? What are the colors of vision? The melodies of faith?
These questions can guide later leave-takings better than escape ever could. Looking deeper and wider, we get to discern what to take with us. We need not carry her; instead, we can tug gently on the threads from further back.
She slides off my back and into the arms of her more powerful ones. No longer roaming my unconscious, I see her there.
Dear Mom, I smile … What an extraordinary life-force pushed through to become us. To become me.