Did not the body of your son break
so that our bodies would not?
Did not the spirit of your son live
so that ours would not die?
I have no third person;
I am not a Trinity;
I cannot keep my mother wholly within
me when she is gone.
Neither can I tear off these eyes and see
what you have taken away.
You, my Father, are not the same
to me as my mother.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
from january
(early January, 2008)
I have a lot of ideas for blogs inside my head, but I write now of the feelings that are now present, of the feelings that are mostly present: mostly, I am afraid. While I know that because the diagnosis is vague, so also are the potential years of life my mother has left to live, the possibility of her not being here is what is most real to me. It's like I can conjure up in myself a huge wave of future time where I am without my mom: a time when my mom is no longer there - in the room, on the phone, upstairs, in the kitchen, driving the car . . . I am overcome by this wave and it grabs my chest and holds my breath and comes out of me in tears. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but there have been nights more often as of late that I have cried myself to sleep.
(January 4th, 2008)
I thought last week as I watched the sun set over the sound that there are things we love because of our mothers, that the world appears to us in the way it does because of a mother's presence within it. Many things I love my mother loves too, but she has been the first to love them. Or, maybe it's because I love my mom that I can't help but love the things in which she finds pleasure.
What are some of these things my mother loves?
My mom loves flowers and working in her garden. She has a beautiful garden. Unlike the one we had growing up in PEI (which was great but in a different, more practical family-survival kind of way), in this garden there are no vegetables, only flowers and herbs and some strawberries. I love this garden (maybe partly because I don't have to weed it), and I especially love the joy my mom takes in watching it grow. I also love flowers - except carnations (which my mom doesn't like either).
My mom loves music and prefers classical music above all others. Every morning I wake up and come downstairs to the sound of the NPR classical station. I know this music has been on for hours, warming the house like a fire. But my mom does not just love to listen to music; she loves to play it too. She is a fantastic pianist because she plays with skill, grace, and emotion. My mom understands music and music understands here. It is this relationship of mutual love that I hear when she plays and I know is present in those earliest morning hours when she wakes up.
My mom also likes to wake up early. Early mornings are kind of like an extreme sport for her (this love I cannot claim to share, but I’m trying to). I don't know if she developed this love because it was only early (and I'm talking early) in the morning that our loud, busy house was quiet, or because she just always loved that first light and the silence that only the songs of small birds accompany.
A love my mom has always fought to preserve is that of order. She like for things to be organized, both on the inside and outside. Now that I have my own large apartment to keep tidy (without kids in it), I realize more and more that my mom was achieving an impossible task: despite the number of people in the house (12) it was always organized and very clean. I'm not sure if it is her corresponding love of bleach that motivates her desire to have a clean house, but I am a firm believer that you can't have one without the other.
My mom has a great love of time, being on time, that is. As you can imagine, this love also seems to defy the sheer physical inertia of my family, and yet, somehow, my mom manages get my entire family to places on time. I think in some way it must be a relief to her that everyone but Joseph has his license now and she can just let us find our own way . . .
My mom has many other loves and even the loves I have written about could be expressed more fully. But there is more time to write about my mother's love, because when I look at myself I see it.
I have a lot of ideas for blogs inside my head, but I write now of the feelings that are now present, of the feelings that are mostly present: mostly, I am afraid. While I know that because the diagnosis is vague, so also are the potential years of life my mother has left to live, the possibility of her not being here is what is most real to me. It's like I can conjure up in myself a huge wave of future time where I am without my mom: a time when my mom is no longer there - in the room, on the phone, upstairs, in the kitchen, driving the car . . . I am overcome by this wave and it grabs my chest and holds my breath and comes out of me in tears. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but there have been nights more often as of late that I have cried myself to sleep.
(January 4th, 2008)
I thought last week as I watched the sun set over the sound that there are things we love because of our mothers, that the world appears to us in the way it does because of a mother's presence within it. Many things I love my mother loves too, but she has been the first to love them. Or, maybe it's because I love my mom that I can't help but love the things in which she finds pleasure.
What are some of these things my mother loves?
My mom loves flowers and working in her garden. She has a beautiful garden. Unlike the one we had growing up in PEI (which was great but in a different, more practical family-survival kind of way), in this garden there are no vegetables, only flowers and herbs and some strawberries. I love this garden (maybe partly because I don't have to weed it), and I especially love the joy my mom takes in watching it grow. I also love flowers - except carnations (which my mom doesn't like either).
My mom loves music and prefers classical music above all others. Every morning I wake up and come downstairs to the sound of the NPR classical station. I know this music has been on for hours, warming the house like a fire. But my mom does not just love to listen to music; she loves to play it too. She is a fantastic pianist because she plays with skill, grace, and emotion. My mom understands music and music understands here. It is this relationship of mutual love that I hear when she plays and I know is present in those earliest morning hours when she wakes up.
My mom also likes to wake up early. Early mornings are kind of like an extreme sport for her (this love I cannot claim to share, but I’m trying to). I don't know if she developed this love because it was only early (and I'm talking early) in the morning that our loud, busy house was quiet, or because she just always loved that first light and the silence that only the songs of small birds accompany.
A love my mom has always fought to preserve is that of order. She like for things to be organized, both on the inside and outside. Now that I have my own large apartment to keep tidy (without kids in it), I realize more and more that my mom was achieving an impossible task: despite the number of people in the house (12) it was always organized and very clean. I'm not sure if it is her corresponding love of bleach that motivates her desire to have a clean house, but I am a firm believer that you can't have one without the other.
My mom has a great love of time, being on time, that is. As you can imagine, this love also seems to defy the sheer physical inertia of my family, and yet, somehow, my mom manages get my entire family to places on time. I think in some way it must be a relief to her that everyone but Joseph has his license now and she can just let us find our own way . . .
My mom has many other loves and even the loves I have written about could be expressed more fully. But there is more time to write about my mother's love, because when I look at myself I see it.
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