Maybe not meaningful to you but meaningful to me is the fact that this song came out the year I became a mother…albeit a pre-birth mother, but a mother aware of the child inside her all the same…
I identified with this song so much.
Somedays, I still do.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the men and women mothers or mother role holders, even the ones that weren’t close to perfect.
When I was growing up, one town that I lived in frequently seemed to have an alley behind every street within its old city limits. We usually didn’t have much money and so when holidays came around like Memorial Day, Mother’s Day and Easter, instead of buying my family flowers (for them or their gravestones), my mother would drive down alleys letting me spot and cut beautiful escapee flowers.
It was really one of my favorite things to do. Lilacs are my grandma J’s favorite and so when those were still in season (depending on when Easter landed) we would scout those out first. I remember the joy and the feeling of responsibility I would get from riding with the door slightly ajar, no seat belt, while my mom would drive slowly down the alleys letting me jump out with scissors to run and steal flowers.
As a parent myself, I cringe at the memory…But as my inner child, I still remember the sneaky happiness. I am quite certain no one would have complained had they seen us cutting their alley irises or tulips, but it sure felt naughty which was part of the fun. There a few times they may have complained upon seeing me squeezing through gaps to reach beautiful flowers IN their yards but…..
I digress.
As an adult, and I use the term relatively, my bestest friend Pippi and I did the same thing. I even continued the tradition with my own children when I lived in that same town again. However I usually parked and walked or would follow the kids down the alley. (Traditions evolve you know.)
We haven’t found any alleys where we are now. Not for lack of trying either. Every year I see the flowers growing in spring and I mourn for my alley escapades.
I’ve seen some pretty gorgeous daffodils on a couple of shoulders and exits near my house though….they might just be fair game.
Happy whatever you do today!
I read something earlier today that made me think a lot about the ramifications of a Romney led country; given the statements that have been made and the stances historically taken by the GOP. Many jokes have been made, gallows humor I suppose, about the white republican males knowledge of my genitalia and sensitive workings of which I couldn’t possibly be allowed to control, you know, as a woman.
But at the heart of it, I am fearful. And THAT frightens me.
I am frightened of what a Romney led Supreme Court could do to Roe v. Wade. To strides made in wage equality. To strides made in marriage equality. Veteran’s benefits equality. Military service equality. Equality in general.
And I also believe that I am rather experientially qualified to speak to a lot of it.
What in particular frightens me most is the seeming need to take away a woman’s right to choose if and when she can have an abortion. If and when she can have birth control and how much it will cost. Et cetera.
You see, my own mother was the product of a rape. And according to (R) Todd Akin, a “legitimate” one at that. But her mother was poor. She was from backwoods Missouri and lived in a time when if you got a girl pregnant, you married her. So marry her rapist she did. She gave birth to my mother either right before or right after she turned 14. My mother was treated with hate and resentment by her own mother, a mother that was a scared and traumatized girl who was subjected to repeated abuse by an evil adult man. When my grandmother finally got away from him, she sent my mother and her little brother with him. My mother represented everything evil about her adolescent and teenaged years so instead of protecting my mother, she projected upon her. She rejected her repeatedly. She allowed her to be abused by him as well, however in her defense; I don’t know if she even realized what he was doing. This is the world my mother grew up in. This is why my mother is irreparably broken. Why my mother will always be a child mother, as described by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She cannot deal with life in any healthy way. My mother allowed those cycles to continue. In her own misguided way, perhaps even facilitated them. Our family has a systemic history of sexual and physical violence.
I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I am a survivor of rape. I chose to have an abortion when I was 21, to terminate a pregnancy that was not the result of rape or incest and my life was not in danger. I simply could not afford another child and decided not to have it. As I sit here today, ripe with all my book learning and fancy education in social work and criminology, despite my lifelong passion and commitment to end the cycle of my own abuse, my own daughter was abused. But we are survivors, she and I. She is actually the one who inspired me to write this, as I am sure certain family members who could read this may be less than thrilled that I wrote it and am publishing it publicly. But I will not continue shame and secrets. Those things give power. I refuse to participate and facilitate. I now understand transgenerational trauma. My mother has never been anything but a victim in her eyes. She wouldn’t know how to be a survivor. She has never allowed herself to be validated as one. And after years of trying, I gave up on fixing her to follow my own path.
A path that had my grandmother been financially or theologically able to control; never would have been. She told me more than once when I was younger that she had prayed for a miscarriage, a stillborn, anything while she was pregnant. Had she been granted that, my mother never would have been born. I would have never been born. My daughter would never have been born. At least not in these specific situations. I have the benefit of my beliefs, which in the most simplistic of explanations are as follows: I believe in energy and the human need to name it and I also believe that energy never disappears, it merely changes. I also believe that we have some control before we are born in choosing our circumstances. This shapes my conscience the same as your beliefs shape yours.
So, in believing this way I can say that in some other way, I would have been born. Or maybe not. The baby I aborted? Was born later. I remember reading a Dean Koontz book once that had a boy who I believe was labeled as autistic, but in reality he was some amazing dimensional savant who, in one scene of torrential downpour, was walking with numerous other characters and yet he was the only one that didn’t get wet…When they asked him how he avoided the water, he replied “I just walked where it wasn’t raining.” I’ve digressed, but my point is that similarly to TV shows like “Fringe,””Lost” and any other amazing multiversal show created by JJ Abrams, every choice we make can be made different somewhere else. Theoretically, in some other dimension where my grandma was able to have an abortion, where she was allowed some semblance of a normal childhood and my mother was never born to her to be resented and broken, I was never born. My daughter in turn, never was either. And I am OK with that. That is a choice that I believe my grandmother should have been able to make.
But for a man, any man, who can never experience what it means to be carrying the product of a rape and be expected to love it and cherish it as a gift of some God to determine legally who can make that choice is absolutely wrong.
For a man, any man, who can never experience what it means to be carrying a child that you don’t want, can’t care for, are not ready for, know you will not be able to be a proper parent to and yet be expected to love it and cherish it the way it deserves because of how HE feels the LAW should be, is absolutely wrong.
I can see this issue from every female side. I do not understand how these men can dictate from a position of ignorance. Some of them are well educated. But they cannot know what it is like.
I am for equality, in all choices. To be able to choose whether you see a pregnancy which results from a rape as a blessing or a curse, to keep it, terminate it or put it up for adoption is the most intimate and difficult of choices. And it should be a personal one. And the same should be said about a pregnancy that is the product of a one night stand. A relationship. A birth control mistake. A statistical anomaly from perfectly taken birth control. A broken condom. It should not be one that is made in the legislature. It is not one that should be made by men who have no idea what is going on in a woman’s life.
Becoming a parent is a huge decision.
You know that bumper sticker that says “A world of wanted children would make a world of difference.” Ponder it for a moment.
Why would you force someone who wants an abortion to have and raise a child when you already believe they are wrong, misled or evil because they WANT an abortion? You already know they don’t want or have decided they can’t have the child. Otherwise, they wouldn’t want the abortion. Just slow down and think.
Human Rights courts have determined it is a violation of human rights to not allow someone who is raped to have an abortion.
So many things are going on in the government, in society, in the world that seems to be attempting to exert power over others. Has the pendulum really swung back so far that we are going to start going the other way? Are the men so worried women are going toward equal that they need to start oppressing us again? Sexually? Legally? From the vaginal ultrasounds before an abortion to Paul Ryan’s not even wanting IVF to be legal, we could be moving backwards. I just wish more people were understanding what could potentially happen. What the damage could be. Back alley abortions. Unreported rapes. More babies in dumpsters. Infanticides. Suicides. Should we bring back the foundling wheel?
Oy. I could go on and on. But I suppose I will close with a quote from Hillary Clinton: “I have met thousands and thousands of pro–choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro–abortion.”
I am the fading echo of my mother’s torment,
the strength she could not find.
Wandering lost for many lives,
trapped by the paths of my mind.
Solace found in the water, fed.
The light has found my dreams.
A heavy haze lifted and showed my own eyes
in them, looking back reflecting.
Her torment passed on; now teaching me.
I took the needle from the groove
and summoned the bridge planks to meet my feet.
Now I am running,
screaming FREE,
for them
and yet
still, for me.
Mind you some of these things I know how to do, NOW. Some of these things, I have not yet figured out, but I am working on it. I am not going to note which are which.
I was talking to your mom the other day
She called me her “little kumquat”
Like it had only been a week since we talked
Not 12 years since she last called me her kumquat
And tried to talk me into taking you to Alaska with me:
Maybe I should have, ha
She was always the woman I wanted to be
Strong and powerful, a female Robert Plant,
Oozing sensuality and a wiseness beyond years…
I think she was probably my first girl crush
I used to think her and my dad would be so perfect
But then you and I would have been weird, ha
Such a stark contrast to my own mother:
Always weak and needing a man to fix everything.
Your mom represented everything feminist I wanted
Looking at her now, I suppose I always saw
What it was I needed to see, needed to emulate
It has taken some time and some men and some women
But I think I have it finally figured out, ha
A tall Celtic goddess in my mind,
The Lady Lazarus I pictured:
She is still the wise woman archetype in my dreams,
Imparting wisdom I must already know.
She shed light on how my son is like her own,
Yet still different.
No, I guess she doesn’t envy me.
But I guess I still envy her, ha.
From one Pisces fish to you.... 