Ode to Mom
Oh Mom, on this Mothers Day, I do hope that your earthly sadness has been lifted and blown away and that you are enjoying this day with true joy and soul knowing.
You declared. as your stroke fall-out intensified and with its progression and physical disconnect, that the most treasured chapter of your life was your year in France (1938) at The Sorbonne. Your diary of that year burned in my fire, but having read it several times, your sharing on the page was written in the voice of your young self in flowery enchanting stylized description, devoid of depth. I wish that you could share the ‘why’ it was your most treasured chapter with me now.
My experience of you, having entered the picture when you were thirty-two, was one of you living your Gemini self. One of you was bursting with life and passion for knowledge and adventure and delving into all things historical and cultural and discussing these at length, and the other pure sorrow/upset/frustration.
Our years in India were triumphant for you, though they impacted your children, each uniquely, massively. You and Dad were a team in ‘his’ work, travelling to distressed villages and hospitals, brain-storming with political leaders on social unrest and problem solving, jumping from jeep to train to rickshaw, while we lived in boarding…in Kodai…tucked away and out of sight. You thrilled at being in the vortex of action with Dad, and you justified not being there for us because ‘all lthe missionaries did this’, but on the other side of it? Trouble.
When we returned to the US, and Dad, as over-seer of all of southern Asia for the UCC, his office was in NYC, car-pooling in every day, and you were suddenly left at home in Tenafly, with w-h-a-t? Children who were now teen-agers, that you barely knew, who were trying to adapt to this new country, and had no use for you. You were rejected by all, except for me.
I tired to mediate…to help you understand…amidst banging doors and your own emptiness and guilt. You clung to this guilt and sadness for the rest of your life., It became your identity…there were thrusts of ‘the old you’ in there…dinner table poetry recitations and passionate historical expositions, but you chose to be a victim to yourself.
I love you with my heart and soul, Mom…and as I told you over and over again, your timing on the planet, culturally, dictated much of what you bowed to…and you did your best with this. Your gifts were and are profound. Your literary self lives on in me and my daughters and now your great grand children. None of this was failure, We human beings bear the stamp of when we were born and with that unconscious conditioning that we can forgive in ourselves as we age.
May today be one of beauty and togetherness with Dad and the knowing that you planted one phenomenal garden down here! And now? A beautiful Mothers Day to you.
Mom, you are my star.