Day # 97: Composing Stories

#97

The beginning of the sprouts.  Don't they look anemic?  I am not going to clear them off until Saturday though, because there is talk of snow on Thursday.

I've spent the day working on a specific story.  I wish I could explain this task better.  What I am trying to do is not write someone's story, but put together words, both theirs and mine, to create a composite or a collage of their story.  My words become a frame to hang their words onto.  Each woman's life is different.  The one I was working on today is very unique.  This story is an example of the difference between loving someone in order to fulfill one's own needs and loving openly without question.  The outcomes are entirely different.  Yet, it is clear that few are able to do it.  Love is hard work.   

About ten years ago on Mother's Day I had hidden myself in my own home like a cat who climbs into a protective spot to take care of her own wounds.  My Mother, who was beginning to push 90 at this point, called me to acknowledge she knew Mothers' Day was an extremely difficult day for me. She said, " I know this is a hard day for you because it represents you losing your daughter, but for me it represents me keeping my daughter.  I did not lose you that day."

I have wrestled with that remark for years. During the process of doing this book I think some light has been shed on the comment.  She was under too much strain when I was pregnant and told me I could not live with the family if I brought her home. I'm not sure she would have stuck to her guns.  It wasn't really her way.  She had just lost her husband and there were other things going on.  She certainly was relieved when I signed those papers.  

Many of the original mothers I have interviewed have severed relationships with their mothers.  Distant fathers and overburdening mothers seem to be a theme.   Not with all of us, and I would not describe my parents as that, emotionally not present and trying desperately to keep everything from falling apart, therefore, coming across as overbearing sometimes.  But listening to everyone's stories is creating for me a new empathy and a new anger at the mothers of the mothers.  Is their a defensive posture that mothers in general assume that leads them to reinforce shame and guilt and misunderstandings in their children?   Or is it just a truth, that if one's children are only an extension of you and not an individual, you will not encourage or nurture them to grow up to be the best they can be.

 

4/7/2010

Can you find the love?