Rosalie Cushman Considers: The Other End Of Motherhood - companion piece...
(Editor's Note: Part One is below, or follow this link: http://ahharsfnews.com/2011/05/04/mothers.)
It is wondrous to have a child. I have never had any event, any course of action that has affected me so deeply, so profoundly as to have a child. The early years are thrilling. It is a kind of intoxication. Oddly, after you have been at it for a few years and it has taken hold of you, it necessarily shuts you off from something inside. You will give up a part of yourself only half realizing this until it is too late. Then, something will happen—your child will become a teenager, then an adult, and you will have to pivot, to catch up with them. And you will notice they have left.
Oh, not the kind of geographical leaving; that’s the easy part. That kind of leaving is obvious. The hard leaving is the cold, critical eye they will turn on you severing the tie that once bound you together. It is a kind of amputation, and like phantom pain from a severed limb, it mysteriously remains painful even without the limb’s viewing. Oddly still, I have awareness I’ve committed this very act myself with my own mother; but like with my son now, was oblivious to her hurt, reckless even, not giving one serious damn even if I did catch her occasionally wince when she looked my way.
It is remarkable how only now, as my adult son thrashes his emotional wreckage towards me, that I recall my callousness at an earlier age. It generates a kind of sorrow that has consumed me at times, at least until it has had its way leaving me spent. Only later can I pick myself up, dusting myself off with the knowledge I gave it the best go I could while being only partly conscious of what I was doing, and only half the time at that – half of a half or so it seems. After all, my principle role model was the very woman who raised me, stiff and aloof, loving me certainly in her own big way even, but leaving that verbalization at the barn door from rural Midwestern America from where she came, where nurturing is for the weak and love is to be left unsaid, acted on profoundly but never directly expressed.
I look at other mothers, friends of mine, and conclude a similar process is in play albeit with different hues and cries and temperaments altogether, but knowing I’m hardly alone in this critical amputation gig. How strange it is indeed for me to take comfort in the clan quality of motherhood, creating its own bond altogether, but surely I must.
Clannishness and one more thing; a big thing! For when the cancer comes or the heart attack, I will squint pointing my head in the direction of my mother, remembering her exit as I march towards mine. I will know it has all been worth it. I will know that even through losing my child in a way, I have gained something of my own. I will see that there is a kind of awareness that has occurred – a consequence of human soulful spin-off that has extended me somehow, expanded me. It is indescribable and sweet even in the face of pain imagined. Undoubtedly, there is a divinity I can smell as well as a freedom I can taste. There has been no other experience I have had as powerful as motherhood; no other event as enlightening.
Without a doubt to be a mother is to be a shepherd. To be a good mother is to leave the lamb its freedom. To be a great mother is to await their eventual gaze back towards you, assured of their return whether it is inside or out of time.
