What Mothers Us Now

How both self-awareness and self-forgetfulness help us through the hard things

The laundry room walls are close on both sides, a tucked away room off the hall adjacent to my daughter’s where I can hear her singing. She is packing for her freshmen year in college, and the world I’ve known for 18 years feels shaky around me. Father, whom have I been, and what am I becoming?

I have the ironing board pulled down from its cupboard in the wall. The flattened wood is approaching one hundred years old, the age of this house's original design. I press the iron’s metal against wrinkled white cotton and listen to the singing, her singing that is both separate and part of me. No, I am grounded and okay. I am not forgotten here.

“What if you let go of your need? What if I became your greatest need?”

My mom, when she ironed, stood in the hallway outside my siblings and my bathroom door. She was efficient, using starch spray to smooth out the fabric of my dad’s workshirts–the blue long-sleeves he wore on the tractor when he farmed almonds, and later the short-sleeve plaids he wore on the commute to Sacramento, replacing the steering wheel of a John Deere with the clicks of an IBM clone. She stood how I stand now, pressing down a stainless steel plate upon fabric as her children grow up and leave and the world spins with or without her.

Father, the world spins with or without me.

The tactile and simple moments of the mundane are even more useful now. They help me feel where I am–know who and where I am. 

Why is it that the older I become, the more myself I feel?

Self-awareness and self-forgetfulness mother me. I  jump back to memory–once again a child, living in the simplicity of playing and being taken care of, the assurance of protection and having few answers and little authority to do the things I thought were all important to do. 

I am ironing, the tactile pushing of steam into cotton melding me into the memory of my mom doing the same, as well as my grandmother, my great-grandmother, all the people whose place in the smallness amounts to part of something greater than us all.  

“Fear neither understanding nor lack of understanding.”

I am trying to hold onto less now—less control, less worry, less fear. The singing in my daughter’s room, a few feet from me as I press this shirt, carries under the door and through me. I let it fill me and do not fight it when it leaves.

And it is not easy. I miss my daughter terribly, and yet she is still here. I stand here ironing and I anticipate her leaving, the ache of her absence in my heart. I stand here ironing and she is still so near, the smell of her perfume and the music from her room carrying out into this hallway. 

“What if you put all your needs into my hands? What if your focus was less on your needs and more on me? Do you think I will forget you? Do you fear I won’t hear your cries?”

And I am crying, crying out with all my needs and knowing each one is already understood. I was needed, and now she is leaving. 

“I will not leave. And she will not leave even when she does.”

What solace can we find in loss? What beauty lasts despite change, despite the people and places we love most going away? Do you think they leave–or remain? What has been your story?

---

The Mothers

How can I tell you
the fear of leaving this
landscape both
terrible and kind
when small hands
were pocketed
in our own,
our voices
sang stories
of imaginary bear hunts
and our laps creased
rocking chairs,
soft wisps of air
brushing our cheeks.
The exodus began long ago
before we were ready,
with their car keys in pockets
and backpacks crammed with
devices for learning to leave,
returning but never
to what was.
And together
we push
against the precipice
of beginning
and ending,
leaning wearily
where once
we stood
with confidence,
the map we held
firm in our hands.

from The Uncovering