Mother's Day is hard for me; I tend to go underground. Like most major holidays in this country, the greeting-card industry beats it to a pulp. I'm not saying moms don't deserve to be celebrated--the good ones deserve that and more--but I find it to be yet another "family holiday" that doesn't have a lot of room for people without families that look at least a little traditional.
My actual mother died in a car accident when I was two years old. This is a loss I am still trying to fully comprehend and grapple with at the age of forty. I think I have missed her more often and more deeply since I was thirty than any time of my life before that. I knew a lot of cool mothers growing up--a lot of my friends have great moms, and I credit a few of them with helping me survive my childhood. I stay in touch with most of them to this day. There are also wonderful women, such as my former mother-in-law, who have been the closest thing to mothers I've experienced in my life. I always try to remember, thank, and celebrate them as well.
I was not medically able to be a mother myself, and I really wanted to for a huge part of my life--in an ideal world, I wanted to have one child and adopt one child. Over the last ten years, I have resigned myself to the fact I don't really have the stamina anymore, my second husband has never really wanted kids, and I'm past wanting to raise a child now; I have accepted that my journey on the planet is a different one. However, since I did try to have a child for years and lost actual pregnancies, a part of me still and always mourns those losses. There is no one more pro-choice than myself on planet Earth that I've ever met, but when I was actively trying, the pregnancies I lost were real to me. Questions that went around my head and heart (things like this are not logical, they just are) included, Am I a mom? Was I ever a mom? If there is a heaven, are my kids there, will I be a mom there? One of my dear friends, one of two or three people I can even I can even mention these feelings to, told me yes, you were; yes, you are; yes, you will. Can I believe these things and still be pro-choice? I think so. It's not a black and white issue, and it gets a lot more gray when you fall into my category (whatever that is) and live a few decades.
Not getting to either have a mother or be a mother, at times I feel shut out of a huge part of not only life, but being female. A woman's life is far from pointless without children, and I am finding out just how NOT pointless it really can be. Society beats that whole issue to a pulp as well, and not just around Mother's Day. I love kids, I love moms, and I love women, but Mother's Day isn't a wonderful celebratory day in everyone's year.
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
"Sunshine Cleaning"
Mr. Salted and I went to see "Sunshine Cleaning" last night--had a nice dinner-and-movie date.
I adored this movie. I like Amy Adams more in every movie I see her in. Some of the more commercial stuff she's done isn't as much my cup of tea, but we all have to pay the rent and in movies I feel "eh" about, she's been a consistent standout. Emily Blunt was fantastic. The whole cast was amazing. They all felt real and believable and everything wasn't tied up with a ribbon bow at the end. There was comedy, but mostly drama. It wouldn't be a movie for everyone, but movies I like the most never are. :o)
The two main characters had lost their mother young, and naturally I could relate to that part. Important people are gone but not forgotten, and sometimes you will hang onto whatever small mementos you have to feel close to them again. I was grateful to see that illustrated beautifully in this film. I don't remember my mother, only having been two when she died, but she was still my mother. I think about her often, always have, and I don't think there's anything weird about it; I believe on some level she has always been with me. It isn't the same as having a mother, but at least it's something.
I liked a lot of the dialogue too. At one point a man the main character is seeing tells her, "That wasn't the way it was" and she responds, "How was it?" People always want to tell you the way it was as if it was the same for everyone. Pshaw.
The theater hooked onto a mall--onto a really snooty mall. We felt underdressed. It was like everyone was going to the prom, even if they were in their 40s. You could tell it was the place to meet and greet for the happenin' younger folk. I remembered (unpleasantly) having to shop at that very mall as a teenager with my thin, pretty stepsister. I just wanted to go to the Sanrio store, as I haven't been to one in years. (They had "Angry Little Girls" merchandise, and I love that book. I bought it for a friend recently.) I liked the Sanrio store, anyway, but Mr. Salted and I were both happy to make our escape.
I adored this movie. I like Amy Adams more in every movie I see her in. Some of the more commercial stuff she's done isn't as much my cup of tea, but we all have to pay the rent and in movies I feel "eh" about, she's been a consistent standout. Emily Blunt was fantastic. The whole cast was amazing. They all felt real and believable and everything wasn't tied up with a ribbon bow at the end. There was comedy, but mostly drama. It wouldn't be a movie for everyone, but movies I like the most never are. :o)
The two main characters had lost their mother young, and naturally I could relate to that part. Important people are gone but not forgotten, and sometimes you will hang onto whatever small mementos you have to feel close to them again. I was grateful to see that illustrated beautifully in this film. I don't remember my mother, only having been two when she died, but she was still my mother. I think about her often, always have, and I don't think there's anything weird about it; I believe on some level she has always been with me. It isn't the same as having a mother, but at least it's something.
I liked a lot of the dialogue too. At one point a man the main character is seeing tells her, "That wasn't the way it was" and she responds, "How was it?" People always want to tell you the way it was as if it was the same for everyone. Pshaw.
The theater hooked onto a mall--onto a really snooty mall. We felt underdressed. It was like everyone was going to the prom, even if they were in their 40s. You could tell it was the place to meet and greet for the happenin' younger folk. I remembered (unpleasantly) having to shop at that very mall as a teenager with my thin, pretty stepsister. I just wanted to go to the Sanrio store, as I haven't been to one in years. (They had "Angry Little Girls" merchandise, and I love that book. I bought it for a friend recently.) I liked the Sanrio store, anyway, but Mr. Salted and I were both happy to make our escape.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Instinct
The recent behavior of my cats (I have a total of three) has led me to reflect on instinct.
One of my cats always wants to be where I am, and sometimes will sit and stare into my face for half an hour or more--which I still find disconcerting, even though I've had him for five years. Almost every time he does it, I say (or at least think), "WHY is this crazy cat staring at me?" I've never been fond of being looked for extended periods of time in general, and I've never had any person or animal do it with quite this amount of intensity. He will never sit on anyone's lap and hates to be picked up, but yesterday he was systematically bringing me all of his toy mice, and then jumping up in my face to see what I thought of them. He gives a loud meow and puts one paw on me if I don't respond enthusiastically enough to his gifts or to his presence in general. He does this almost daily--I think it's a combination of his natural prey drive instincts and in effect telling me, "See? I do love you, even if I don't sit in your lap like those other saps."
My other two cats are a matched set of tuxedo boys and were about three months old when they were found behind a dumpster at a business park where I used to work. Everyone in the office fell in love with them; they were healthy, loving, and purred a lot, but no one could take both of them but me and I didn't want them separated. They absolutely clung to each other for the first year or so--they even cried to be put in the same cage when I took them to the vet to be neutered, which melted the hearts of everyone who worked there. They still play and interact like siblings, wrestling, chasing each other, and settling down for the occasional snuggle, but one is much more aggressive and independent than the other. The less aggressive one actually snuggles more often with Mr. Prey Drive than he does with his brother now.
The more aggressive of the two tuxedo cats is the one who had me thinking about instinct--our nickname for him is Darth Kneader. He always wants to be where we are rather than sit in laps, but for whatever reason, he waits until we are both in bed, comes up between us, and kneads. We're talking determined, brisk kneading accompanied by a five-alarm purr, sometimes continuing for an hour, and usually about 3 or 4 AM. After that is accomplished, ol' Darth goes and gets a snack, then retires to the end of the bed or goes about his early morning business elsewhere. He was probably separated from his mother too soon--even so, it blows my mind that kneading still corresponds with eating for him, even though he is almost two years old and his food comes out of a dish and has for quite some time.
I have often wondered if my relationship to food was affected by the death of my mother when I was two years of age. Food on the whole is so fraught with mother energy and issues of comfort and security; the movie "Eating", that I referenced a while ago in this blog, was chock-a-block full of women talking about how their mothers affected their relationship to food. I've talked to enough women with eating issues to know that mothers often pass down their own food and body image issues down to their daughters. (So can fathers and other people, obviously, but mothers seem to be the most frequent culprits.) Oftentimes, mothers get blamed too much for things in general, but they can certainly have a dog in this particular fight, or so the anecdotal evidence would seem to indicate.
I know my views on this issue aren't without bias, but I can say that when I was contemplating motherhood myself, my biggest fear was that I would die before I could raise my children, a fear that made sense given my own experience. My second biggest fear? That I would pass on my food issues to them.
I'm going to read more about this.
One of my cats always wants to be where I am, and sometimes will sit and stare into my face for half an hour or more--which I still find disconcerting, even though I've had him for five years. Almost every time he does it, I say (or at least think), "WHY is this crazy cat staring at me?" I've never been fond of being looked for extended periods of time in general, and I've never had any person or animal do it with quite this amount of intensity. He will never sit on anyone's lap and hates to be picked up, but yesterday he was systematically bringing me all of his toy mice, and then jumping up in my face to see what I thought of them. He gives a loud meow and puts one paw on me if I don't respond enthusiastically enough to his gifts or to his presence in general. He does this almost daily--I think it's a combination of his natural prey drive instincts and in effect telling me, "See? I do love you, even if I don't sit in your lap like those other saps."
My other two cats are a matched set of tuxedo boys and were about three months old when they were found behind a dumpster at a business park where I used to work. Everyone in the office fell in love with them; they were healthy, loving, and purred a lot, but no one could take both of them but me and I didn't want them separated. They absolutely clung to each other for the first year or so--they even cried to be put in the same cage when I took them to the vet to be neutered, which melted the hearts of everyone who worked there. They still play and interact like siblings, wrestling, chasing each other, and settling down for the occasional snuggle, but one is much more aggressive and independent than the other. The less aggressive one actually snuggles more often with Mr. Prey Drive than he does with his brother now.
The more aggressive of the two tuxedo cats is the one who had me thinking about instinct--our nickname for him is Darth Kneader. He always wants to be where we are rather than sit in laps, but for whatever reason, he waits until we are both in bed, comes up between us, and kneads. We're talking determined, brisk kneading accompanied by a five-alarm purr, sometimes continuing for an hour, and usually about 3 or 4 AM. After that is accomplished, ol' Darth goes and gets a snack, then retires to the end of the bed or goes about his early morning business elsewhere. He was probably separated from his mother too soon--even so, it blows my mind that kneading still corresponds with eating for him, even though he is almost two years old and his food comes out of a dish and has for quite some time.
I have often wondered if my relationship to food was affected by the death of my mother when I was two years of age. Food on the whole is so fraught with mother energy and issues of comfort and security; the movie "Eating", that I referenced a while ago in this blog, was chock-a-block full of women talking about how their mothers affected their relationship to food. I've talked to enough women with eating issues to know that mothers often pass down their own food and body image issues down to their daughters. (So can fathers and other people, obviously, but mothers seem to be the most frequent culprits.) Oftentimes, mothers get blamed too much for things in general, but they can certainly have a dog in this particular fight, or so the anecdotal evidence would seem to indicate.
I know my views on this issue aren't without bias, but I can say that when I was contemplating motherhood myself, my biggest fear was that I would die before I could raise my children, a fear that made sense given my own experience. My second biggest fear? That I would pass on my food issues to them.
I'm going to read more about this.
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About Me
- Salted with Shadows
- Seattle, WA, United States
- This blog focuses largely on a personal journey to and through weight-loss surgery. It's also about reading, writing, animals, photography, love, humor, music, thinking out loud, and memes. In other words...life.
