Mother on Mother’s Day

Mother on Mother’s Day. How can I possibly write about her? Create something with meaning? Hold her in my heart? Mother-daughter relationships are dynamic, created and recreated over time like an artful layered painting. Our canvas, my mother’s and mine, was brushed with light and shade. Yet, I found there was richness in both.

What Do You Know: This is what I know.

I was aligned in the same orbit with her. We were intertwined with an energy force that allowed me to develop independence and Mother to see with new perspective—giving each the power and space to grow and transform. My relationship like most mother-daughter bonds was complex and layered, creased with the places and depths of our living, and filled with fragile things and other things that mattered. There was synchronicity and love between us.

Mother and I were grateful for the wide field of grass, the unexpected beauty of morning’s early light. Its gentle cupping of something invisible, momentarily lifting us, as she said, to a place where all resides. In the spring, we welcomed robins, the starlings, all matter of beasts. Squirrels busy finding buried nuts, horses running free, absent their winter coats, chasing each other across the fields, tails flying.  And, in contrast, we watched the ambling movement of brown cows with long eyelashes blinking slowly in the sun.

What Are the Living Images

Imprinted on my mind are images of her—of us–that are visceral, vivid, flowing and true. In mother’s heart pulsed a river. When writers write, when I write about Mother on Mother’s Day, we become active participants in the experience—living it and it’s all poured into our poetry, short stories. Memoir. Snapshots of my mother are part of a reel that keeps spinning: Images of her pumping water from our cistern, her arms moving like pistons, dragging the heavy bucket into our farmhouse. Her back turned, my sister and I drop faces into the cool water and shake our heads like wild animals, flinging wet drops at each other.

 Mother chasing mice in our kitchen with an old broom and yelling words with several syllables. And we’d be in the next room, giggling, mouthing the unsacred words, holding our bellies.

 And on Saturdays, her housedress stained and dark under the arms, Mother hung load after load of laundry on the clothesline looking like flying ghosts or people with no bodies. My brother and I hide behind the sheets and play tag, sometimes pulling the sheets down in our buzzing. Wrapped up like zombies, rolled tacos.

And when sadness overcomes

I turn to the mirror and, for a moment, I think my mother will speak. And then I remember, nothing ever created entirely leaves us. –Becky Breed

Writing/Creativity Exercise:

• Read what Julia Kasdorf in What I learned from My Mother and May Sarton’s August Third wrote about their mothers.
• Traveling back over time and space, think about shared experiences with your mother or mother figure, perhaps grandmother, devoted aunt, listing two or three experiences that stand out. Then, under each, trace the image highway between the heart and head and identify the place where each happened such as Aunt Mary’s kitchen, backyard, dining room, in the car, baseball game, grocery store.
• Explore your mother-daughter or son experiences. How significant are they? What do they say about your relationship?
• Select one experience to write about. Include in your writing concrete items that were part of the imagery. For example, socks, bucket, clothesline, dress, white blouse, pigeons, basketball, bricks, etc.
• Now write a poem or short story beginning with the first line “I learned from my mother…” Include place and associated concrete items in your story. Enjoy.

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