Peer through this lens, our
own jumbled works in progress,
lives grown here
from the inside out, the
outside in, ways I have shaped
you (you shaped me), failed
you (my humble ask:
forgive me?), lived
to tumble together again;
kaleidoscopic reinvention,
the slow-turn beauty of recognition:
it was never about me.
Did you read the word as a human body or something more figurative?
What is your relationship with your physical body?
What does the word mean in your interactions with others?
Yet again, the prompt led somewhere unexpected: “body of work” and motherhood. Working full-time through a vicious fibromyalgia flare has me flattened. My kids get a few essential moments when I drag myself from behind the pain, but not much else. In our blended crew, my husband does most of the work associated with motherhood. The role-reversal is a healthy model, but the extreme takes a toll.
She always told the story of how, on a Mother’s Day shortly after my first marriage, I “devastated” her (a favorite word) by stating I didn’t plan to have children (not new info). But she leaves out the badgering that broke me that day: when will you make me a grandmother, repay me, create another human for me to own?
She leaves out the years where she taught me motherhood was a burden, the child’s obligation to sacrifice herself, her body, her future, no statute of limitations on the debt. She leaves out the pain of knowing I’d failed before I began, in her eyes.
I learned motherhood was all or nothing, that a mother is only as OK as her least OK child (actual quote). I learned it was joyless. I learned she wished she’d had a third, the elusive charm, my brother and I not enough.
Why would I choose that – for myself, for an unborn innocent?
I did choose motherhood, on my own time and terms, once, then again times three (and now the bonus of a daughter-in-law). And in choosing them, every day, I experience the relief and curious joy of knowing that their lives are about them.
I’m just along for the ride, for as long as they’ll have me.
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