My own mother was a writer, though you’d never know it by looking at her life. She never published anything, never collected her works, never entered any competitions or received any degrees. But even now, almost a decade after her death, her writing exists. Mostly tucked away in people’s memory boxes, or wherever they keep things that mean something to them: drawers, boxes, trunks, books. With my mother it was in books, encyclopedias to be exact, in the volume that corresponded the first letter of the person’s first name. Her main form of writing was letters; she was always writing people letters and sending cards with notes inside.
Often, she wrote poems for people on special occasions. I have several such poems in my own memory box: from my sixteenth birthday, high school graduation, the birth of my daughter. Over the years, many people have told me how she helped them through difficult times in their lives, how she always knew just what to say to make you feel better about your life, about yourself, how she had sent them a letter or poem or card that changed something for them, allowed them to see things differently, gave them the hope they needed to keep going. And I like that about her.
Her poems were never something I would write. They were full of her faith in her God, her belief in the essential goodness of people, her advice on dealing with grief. Conversely, she never would have written the things I write. She used to always ask me, why I couldn’t write about happy things once in a while. I used to tell her happiness was an illusion and I wasn’t buying. The way I saw it, she used happiness as a mask: buried reality in mass graves behind her eyes, put on a smile, and called it a life. There was truth to this. Many terrible things happened in our youth, continued to happen, even after she knew, because she couldn’t or wouldn’t accept that they were true.
If a story were written about her life, one that took everything into account, it would be difficult for the reader to decide if she was a good mother. It is difficult for her own children to decide. In a family of eleven, each with our own experiences, our own individual and shared histories, our own memories, there are those who feel she did no wrong, those who feel she did everything wrong, and those who feel she did the best she could. I find myself in that last category. I recognize how she was defined by her generation, confined by expectations of what it was to be a wife, a mother, a woman, limited both by her beliefs and by her fears. I can understand her inclination to remain silent, to deny a reality she felt powerless change, to repress the truth of what was happening to her children, and to invest in a belief that removed responsibility from her shoulders and placed it in God’s hands.
But I also recognize the repercussions of her choices. I also still suffer the consequences of having had a mother who lived in denial, in willful ignorance of the reality of our lives. It is lovely that she touched so many lives within her community, that so many have fond memories of her, but it is unbearably sad that she dedicated her entire life to being a wife and a mother and in the end understood that she had failed. Failed to protect her children when they needed her protection, failed to take action when they action needed to be taken, failed to believe them when they needed to be believed.
I often wonder what would have been different if she had been encouraged to pursue her own interests, if she had found a way to consider realities outside her own experience, if she had received validation for something other than her role as wife and mother. Often wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mother who believed in herself, who understood her own worth, who was secure enough to take action. I think it would have made all the difference: to her, to us.
It is not my mother’s generation. Many doors have been opened, or at least defined as doors, which were nothing more than brick walls in her time. There is much to be grateful for, many achievements to recognize, many women and men who have come before us, who have worked to gain ground, to create possibilities. It is up to us, it is our responsibility, our obligation, our way of validating their work, of recognizing their sacrifice, of honoring their lives, to continue. We make stepping-stones with our lives; allow future generations to find ways to cross rivers which once seemed impassible, to remove obstacles which once seemed immovable, to live lives which once seemed improbable. The way we do this is by making choices, taking action in our lives that create stepping-stones for ourselves.
I have done many things in my life I was once sure I could not do, changed many things I was once sure I could not change, forgiven many people I was once sure I could not forgive. At points, I have limited myself in many ways. I allowed my difficulties in school, my learning disability, my lack of access to money, and my belief that I was stupid to keep me from even considering going to college. I only went because my mother asked me to, asked me to try, at least, before she died. Despite fears that they wouldn’t let me in, that even if they did I wouldn’t be able to afford it, that even if I could, I was too stupid to learn anything, I got in, I got grants, and I did amazingly well. If you had told me ten years ago, however, that I would graduate summa cum laude, with honors, from college, I would have thought you were on crack. That is, I would have been incapable of believing that could ever be true.
I limited myself by accepting the message that being a fat girl meant no man would ever love you. That a women’s value, a woman’s worth, was in direct correlation to her attractiveness to the opposite sex. Latched onto the first man who ever said he loved me and stayed with him for years. Because I was afraid that he was right, that they were right, that no one else would ever love me. Ironically, being with him was what exposed me to a culture in which the traits that had garnered such negative attention, in the white, rural community where I grew up, were suddenly seen as strengths. My sarcasm, my stubbornness, my issues with authority, my propensity for “back talk,” even my weight, was no longer met with negativity. Being with him exposed me to the existence of a whole other reality, made me question beliefs I had accepted as fact. Being with him exposed me a mother unlike any mother I had known: Mama Lena.
Mama Lena was all about action, was all about truth, was all about reckoning. It is her voice I hear, even now, in moments of doubt, in moments of fear. It is her that I see: standing at the stove in her church dress and slippers, telling me, “Ya got it in ya’, girl. Ya got it in ya’.” Even then, when I didn’t really understand what “it” was, I believed her. She made you feel like everything she said was nothing, if not truth. She didn’t care what anybody thought of her and didn’t hesitate to stand up for anyone she loved, no matter what the cost. I never saw her write a word, never saw her read a word, but the way she lived her life, the way she spoke and what she chose to say, was poetry to me. Lifted away veils of confusion and denial and belief. Woke me up to the reality of life, to what was happening before my eyes that I had failed to see because I had chosen to be blind. Healed something in me.
There are not enough mothers in poetry, in fiction, in reality, who are the writers of their own lives. We all need mother who believe in us, who believe in themselves, who are courageous enough to take action, to deal with reality, to seek out the truth: no matter how terrible it may be; no matter what demands it makes of us, once it is known; no matter what action we may have to take by accepting it. We need to see mothers, we need to value mothers, we need to be mothers who accept responsibility for their own actions, for their choices, for their lives. It is good, essential even, that so many women are writing stories of their survival, are writing stories of their experiences with being victimized by people in their lives, by societal expectations, by institutionalized sexism, by our devaluing, objectifying culture, are refusing to be silenced by fears and taboos.
It has been a source of validation and unification for all women, especially for women who felt they were alone in their reality, who had been convinced that they were the only ones. It has been a stepping-stone, without which we would be unable to cross. But we are ready to move on, to take the next step, to fill our pages and our lives with strong, honest, complex women: women who write their own stories; women who are object of their own lives, not the subject of someone else’s; women who are, first and foremost, human beings, whatever roles they may play. We all need these women: in our lives, in our literature, in our shared history. And the only way to fill that need is to create them, to encourage them, to validate them, and, perhaps, most essentially, to be them.
No comments:
Post a Comment