…this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much …
Jamaica Kinkaid, “Girl”
Will you be there? … Can you hear the truth?
Tori Amos, “Promise”
It’s been a lovely meditation for me to sit down and write daily tributes for Women’s History Month. Now, on the last day, I’m returning to the relationship with the most elemental power: the Mother-Daughter bond. So many artists have written and sung of this power: Jamaica Kincaid’s one-sentence story, “Girl,” is always close to my heart. Tori Amos’ duet with her daughter Natashya, “Promise,” is a guaranteed face-wreck. Really. If you’re about to go out, don’t watch it. I’m speaking from experience.
Now that I’m done with Women’s History Month, I must return to my current project, “Awesome Daughters of Difficult Mothers, and Difficult Daughters of Awesome Mothers.” Soon, I’ll convene a mastermind of women to plumb our mother-daughter legacies. We’ll tell our stories, untangle our truths, and open up new chapters. Most of us are in that childfree, motherless stage of life, or the stage where mother has become the child. This circle of caregiving forms the whole, and our hearts seek connection.
Within the stories and teaching passed down from mother to daughter, there are silences, warnings, and omissions. My mother left a studio full of works-in-progress and works-abandoned, including many unfinished portraits of me. She was never satisfied and I wouldn’t sit still for long. We couldn’t complete that artistic transaction until the end, as she was dying and I served her as caregiver. I sat and wrote, and she painted my portrait. But still, I had to press her to sign that painting. My poem about our changing dialogue, “Portrait,” was published in a literary journal and included in Light, Particularly, the book of her art and life that took me twelve years in the making.
Terry Tempest Williams needed twenty-five years to process the blankness of her mother’s journals. Natasha Trethewey‘s mother died twenty years before she published the Pulitzer-Prize winning book dedicated to her. Our mother’s stories will break our hearts, if we don’t tell them. They will live hidden, handed down, until an unrepentant daughter refuses to be silenced.
As I close this chapter of my writing practice, I’ll open another. April may be the cruelest month, but it’s also national poetry month.
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You are incredible. I’m always so impressed with what you do.
This weekend was the 39th anniversary of my mother’s death and it just get easier, but never easy. I am very much part of the painful saga between mothers and daughters. xoxxoxo Ruth
Thanks, Ruth, I hope you know how much your regard means to me. You broke my world open, intellectually, in 1980, and I’m forever grateful. So sorry to think of your mother’s passing when you were young (and she was, too). If my mother and I had not had the years we had, my story would be much different. xox Janice
Having adult children is a serious step in forgiving our imperfect mothers. As we forgive our mothers, we are so much more likely to forgive ourselves for myriad errors in raising our kids! Love to all!
Thanks, Elaine — Your comment makes me smile, because my mother used to scold that I’d understand once I had my own daughter.. she wished I would have one like me. Ha! Fooled her … no kids. But it’s not as if I didn’t want a daughter. My priority was to find the right man first, and that took too long 🙂 So, I’m happy to say that even without adult children, I was able to forgive, forget, and move on. When I look back at all of difficult years, I can see that she was trying to protect me, or to make me “perfect” according to what she knew or believed. But, I wasn’t an oil painting — much more like a watercolor; elusive and independent, and yes, a tad bit unforgiving until I passed forty years of age. xox Janice
Janice,
Your words continue to inspire and challenge me to journey beyond the places where, most of the time, I live quite comfortably. 🙂 I am halfway through Terry Tempest Williams’ “When Women Were Birds” and am reluctant to turn each page, as it brings me closer to the end of her journey and the book. You remind all of us that love and forgiveness heals the scoldings and silences. Thank you!
Denise,
I felt the same way when I came close to the end of your book, Touchstone. You really drew me into that world of love and pain and release that you journeyed with your daughters. What I found so remarkable about Terry Tempest Williams’ book and process was her patience and ability to step back and allow her mother’s blank journals to bring up so much rich, universal, material. What a blessing it is when we share those spaces. xo