Still Here

I always end up feeling remiss when I don't post any updates of substance for a week or more, but most of what has been going on in my life has been either the same routine or changes and transitions of such depth and complexity that it's very hard to write about them in the time that I have to be alone and think.

So, the Good News: Miss V and I have been getting along pretty well. We communicate primarily via email (which seems to short-circuit my tendency to be rubbed the wrong way by her voice), and I am being ultra-careful to not overreact to what could be taken as criticism.

Quarterly bonus checks were issued last week. Mine was very nice.

My daughter and I are doing some serious work on the house. Today we got a friend with a pick-up truck and a tool set to tear apart and haul away an old recliner that has been doing nothing but acting as a clothes rack (and a poor one at that) in the middle of our bedroom, and I completely cleared off two shelves of old clothes and seldom-used bedding which was sorted through for washing, garage sale, or garbage. I do feel that my sudden drive to gain control over and harmonize my home is a manifestation of what's going on in my spiritual life.

Powerful stuff continues to happen with my shamanic studies -- but it's still experiences I don't feel entirely comfortable writing about even on a Friends-only setting. What I'm experiencing would strain my own credulity if my best friend was talking about it. But I can feel changes occuring inside me, and in the healing of old relationships, and in increased mental-emotional health, and greater richness of my spiritual devotions. I almost wrote "I am becoming the woman I always wanted to be" -- but it's more like I'm uncovering that woman within myself. I'm been heartened that so far none of my offline friends have reacted with scepticism or negative judgement, but I haven't yet dared speak of this to my parents.

I meet twice a month with Kim, my shamanic teacher, and once a month with Tom, my spiritual director, and it makes for an intense and dynamic path. Between the two of them, almost the full range of my spirituality is nurtured and challenged to deeper growth.

Mother's Day Reflections

My daughter is nine years old, and I still feel a sense of unreality on Mother's Day. I still sometimes have a hard time getting my mind around the fact that I am, indeed, a mother. Even with beautiful nine year-old bundle of energy sharing my living space.

I think that part of it is that she is so much her own person. There is a physical resemblance between us (especially if you look at my own childhood photos) but her interests, her skills, and her syle are entirely different from who I have ever been. She's smart, but her intelligence manifests in different ways than mine. I still struggle with the fact that she's not particularly interested in reading or writing. Or that when she does read, she prefers non-fiction about the natural world, particularly animals, rather than novels or fairytales. She is a talented artist, with far more ability than I've ever shown, and has an amazing sense of color. She has a knack for building things.

And yet even though I sometimes blink in surprise at this little creature sharing my home, I also have realized for a very long time that becoming a mother was an initiatory experience in the classic sense: it is a Mystery that must be experienced to understand. Neither the intellect nor the imagination can do more than grasp at the edges. And having undergone it, there is no way to go back to what I was. Even if I were to walk out on my daughter tomorrow. Even if -- God forbid -- she were to die, I could never again be what I was before.

I disliked being pregnant. Childbirth was a twenty-four hour ordeal culminating in a c-section (stretched out with my wrists bound down as if I were on a cross), followed by a week in the hospital due to complications, followed by nine months of post-partum depression. "They" say you forget the pain of childbirth. Not me. I have never been remotely tempted to go through that again.

When they placed my daughter in my arms for the first time I did not feel the rush of love that I've heard is common. I felt an overwhelming sense of pity for this poor, vulnerable, tiny creature -- and a fierce sense of responsibility and desire to protect and shelter her. She spent that first night in the hospital bed with me because it was unthinkable to me to thrust this infant, who had been coccooned so warmly in my body for so long, into a bassinet to sleep alone. She deserved to be held close.

I had no experience going into motherhood. I had never liked being around kids, never felt comfortable around them. I worked as a babysitter no more than five or six times as a young teen. My sister is only 18 months younger than I am, so I had no experience taking care of her. I never imagined myself being a mother when I grew up, never wanted to be a mother. I had become pregnant by choice, because my husband had always wanted a child. We thought he would be the primary parent.

We were idiots. The spouse with the full time professional job does not become the full-time parent. Not when the other spouse is in grad school. Finding myself a full-time mother without a job or status as a student (I was on a year's leave), feeling very little affection for my baby (My what???), was the second-worst experience of my life. Fortunately, my mom was there to support me, as was my husband, and I discovered (eventually) what a wonderful thing Paxil can be.

So I did not come happily into motherhood. I was depressed, frightened, and clueless. Fortunately (again), my parents were marvelous as parents -- and still are -- and I had great role models, an example to strive toward. But I've had to work hard to find my own style of being a "good mother", as I was not going to be either a stay-at-home mom, nor a professional person with a full-time homemaking spouse at home. I was in uncharted territory for my family.

Loving my daughter in a real way -- not just sentiment -- has meant constantly challenging myself to overcome my self-centeredness, to make the time to be there for her, to re-evaluate my own needs when weighed against hers, and to find ways of being present to and for her in everyday acts that are meaningful to her but won't leave me gibbering and chewing on the carpet. I am not one of those people with a naturally generous spirit, not much of a nurturer. I have to work at it, to choose to express a better self than my basic impulses.

My daughter was at least six months old before I really started to love her. She was close to two before I really started to like her. The older she gets, the more I enjoy her and the better mother I become. Sometimes she throws her arms around me and says, "You're the best mommy in the whole world!" I'm certain that's not actually the case, but I'm glad she seems to think it's true.

People often compliment me on my daughter: on her sweetness, her generous spirit, her politeness, her fine communication skills, and frequently they say "You are a very good mother" based on what they see of my daughter. I'd like to take some credit for what/who she is becoming, but I'm keenly aware of how much is also due to the nurturing of my parents and her father, and the spiritual inheritance she gets from them.

I'm never entirely comfortable on Mother's Day. I've never been entirely comfortable with being a mother and something still twitches inside me when I get Mother's Day cards. But from Day 1, I've been doing my damnedest to be a good mother to my child, and I'd like to think I'm doing pretty well.

I'd like to think that I'm a better person because of it.