Loving My Mother

Every Sunday recently I have been taking a class taught on-line by Catharine Clark called Soul Journaling. Today she talked about the Jungian ideas around the shadow self. She read us a line by Rilke: She stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you. 

I wrote about my mom. 

In my book You Don’t Look Adopted, I made my mother the other as a way, in part, to deal with things about myself I did not know how to accept and/or embrace. 

I have grown up a little since writing that book, and I would like one more hour with my mom so I could let her see how I really feel.  

This is what I wrote today thinking about these things. I was thinking that maybe you would like to write about your mother, too. It seems like a good thing to do during these crazy times: find a way to travel into the heart.

We have planned for this day. 

We stopped talking to each other weeks before.

 The basket was waiting for us in the field. My heart was so calm. Maybe it had never been this calm. It was like the sea when there is no breeze. None.

We never sat like this, crossed-legged, knees almost touching, but this is how we sat today.

My mother has pale blue eyes, and today there were here, in her head, in this field, focused on my face.

My eyes are sometimes blue, sometimes green, and today they were here, in my head, in this field, focused on my mother’s face.

She is beautiful, like air.

We look at each other’s eyes as if we have all the time in the world, not looking, seeing. Our eyes are still in our heads as we see each other. This kind of seeing is like breathing. Someone else is breathing us.

We are here to get rid of what we don’t need. My mother smiles at me, a small smile, a real smile, and I know it is time to start. I open the basket and get the scissors. I stand up and I cut my mother’s hair. It is more like the idea of hair than the actual thing. I feel as though I am cutting the hair of a baby. If I had an ax, I could chop down the tallest trees without breaking a sweat, but what I have are scissors and hair.

She looks ridiculous, so vulnerable, patches of short hair, like a doll loved into ugliness. I take the bowl out of the basket, the water, the soap and sit down, the filled bowl between us. My mother leans forward and I gently scoop water over her lonesome scalp. I have never washed my mother’s hair like this, like two monks tending to each other.

My mother has a fine scalp. I don’t know how else to say it. Maybe in a previous life she was Queen of England. I love the feel of my mother’s skin. She reaches up, puts her hand over my hand and we soap her scalp together, moving over bones, brain, memory.

I take the razor out of the basket and carefully work to leave my mother’s scalp bare and remarkable. I am careful not to rush, not to make a mistake. My mother hums, I think, or else it is the sound of blood moving through the body. There are birds and they sing. The grass is long and brown and smells like summer. Somewhere there are beach roses and sweet peas.

When I am done, my mother gets up and rubs her scalp, pleased.

We use the same water for me, dirty and scummy with soap. I lean forward and my mother lets her fingers get tangled in my hair. She takes the scissors and cuts a hunk of my hair. Then another and another. She works swiftly. She seems frantic to see  my scalp. Water, soap, razor. I trust her. I don’t mind if she cuts me—I am prepared, but even though she works so quickly, she does not hurt me. She throws aside the razor when she is done and rubs her palms over my scalp as if she can read it. Her hands are so warm. When she is done, when her hands have had their full, I sit up.

We see each other. My mother has never seen my newborn scalp, and I have never seen hers. 

We glisten. We shine. My mother’s eyes are so bright.

What is your favorite word? she asks. Fish, I say.

 What is your favorite word? I ask. Pencil, she says. 

 We look at each other. I have crawled inside her so deeply I have come through the other said.

I have to go, she said. 

There are tears. 

She stands up and we hug each other and the bones of our chests touch, press. Her heart beats against, in, and with my heart. 

I am sorry, she says, and she turns away. We both know she wants to go more than she wants to stay, and she wishes she were different. 

She is wearing a dress, and I watch her walk away through the long grass we both love so much, this grass I have known since I was a child. She gets smaller and smaller, and I want to call her back. I’m not sure I’m okay. I’m not sure I’m okay without her. Maybe I will die. I can see her, small, so small, and then I feel her in my heart. My heartbeat remembers her heartbeat and I feel so strong, so tall. 

I love the smell of this place, this island, the horses in the field across the dirt road.

My mother is gone. She loves me. I love her.

I have no hair I have to brush or comb. I am unencumbered. 

I can start every day like this.

She stretches beyond what limits her, to hold you.