There are so many kinds of mothers
A Mother’s Day letter
(Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, Mother with her Young Daughter)
There are so many kinds of mothers.
I have met mothers with sky-vast memories, remembering the smallest wound on the back of your left knee. Still asking if it hurts. Mothers with endless memories, still aching from the first time they saw you fall off the red hammock you’d swing on every dusk. Chafing your leg every night before you go to sleep.
Mothers with their unending tales of fairies, elves who could climb every mountain in the world. Mothers with dreams in the last twinkle of their eyes, before they go to sleep at night. Mothers with more dreams for you than for themselves.
Mothers asking for the fifteenth time if you’ve drunk your morning’s milkshake. Mothers hoping for the hundredth time you haven’t been skipping out on your breakfast because of the demanding boss who needs you an hour earlier in the office for no reason.
Mothers secretly wishing you could remove yourself from anyone who hurts you even the slightest.
Mothers with their mother hearts: asking over & over (despite you having eaten at home so many years)— how is it? Do you need more salt? Fruits? Yoghurt? You’re home after so long, why don’t you take a nap today?
Mothers tending to your wounds. Mothers combing your hair. Mothers retrieving your lost pair of white shoes, for the fifteenth time in the year. Mothers sitting down all dusk to help you resolve the trickiest parts of your 10th grade physics homework.
Mothers who are the gardeners of the our human spirit.
I’ve also met mothers exhausted by the constant ticking of the clock. Who wish to live outside the binding structures of time. Mothers who are burdened with the impossible responsibility of being the only ones to hold the house together. Mothers who are always expected to look good, talk good. Mothers always wondering if they’re good enough.
Mothers scared at the thought that they may not have enough of themselves to give to their children. Mothers always wishing they could give more of themselves to their children.
Mothers running from one job to another— God bless their heavy, tender hearts. Mothers who sincerely wish to see you shine, but do not know how to help you to. Mothers inseparably close to you and othered from you at once.
I’ve also seen mothers with reckless angers: the burn of incomplete dreams in their eyes. How they spare no one from their unforeseen bouts of anger. Mothers who dole out love only at the end of everything. Mothers who try to break your spirit.
Who sometimes look at you like you were a stranger to them. Who’d do anything to mould you into a version of themselves— their own shape & form. Who’d stand right at the doorway to your dreams. Mothers for whom love is a conflicted emotion: one that they struggle to offer even themselves.
And the most complex of them all: mothers who seem to hold love and anger in equal measure. Who pull you close, & then push you away. How you sometimes look at them & wonder: could one person bear as much love and rage in them, in such a precise measure?
Ones struggling with love, but still trying to love. Mothers who want to love.
There are so many kinds of mothers— and I want this piece to acknowledge everything you may be feeling today: love, longing, grief, hurt. No matter what you’re feeling and where you are, I want you to know you’re seen and cherished. Take care.
Here’s a poem I wrote a few years ago. First published in Quince Magazine.
Wound
for my mother
The bulb-round waist
of spring figs.
A bamboo sack bulging
under the breasts of
berries.
Mother, I have always
longed to know
which part of your swelling
pains you the most.
This piece is quite beautiful. You've captured those many facets of mothers, the diversity of how they love.
The small care they give and the larger ones even to their own detriment.
And the final poem, that one gives much to think about. In my interpretation, you are offering your mother gifts that are reminiscent of her body, calling back to the fact that she gives her own body as a gift to you, even when it may pain her.
This is lovely work!
thank you for acknowledging complexities of the mothering relationship. i too know folks with deep and loving connections with their mother and others with deep mother wounds and many spanning the betweenness.
and your poem, those images will linger. so evocative.