As I was caregiving my mother, I couldn’t help but observe my mother’s words and actions.
If you live with someone, talk and listen, you begin to notice patterns. The same old things get said day in and day out. We’re all such creatures of habit. As my mother continued to age, she lost her ability to filter her thoughts or hide her fears.
It got me thinking about where I am now…and who I will become.
What concerns will linger and play and replay like a needle stuck on a record?
What judgements will slip out when I am too tired or too sick to guard them?
I’ve decided that I better do a little “soul keeping” every day.
Like housekeeping, it’s best to take out the trash and do the dishes on a daily basis–
if not, the place begins to stink.
I doubt we’re much different.
From Part I of Mothering Mother.
I have this theory; I’ve decided Mother is like concentrated orange juice. We all are, really. We start out potent, tart and pure—right off the tree. When we’re babies we don’t care if you like us or if we’re pleasing you. We are uncontaminated, unfiltered, and unadorned, with no knowledge of what we should or should not do. In this concentrated version, we are a wild DNA cocktail of mama and daddy, ancestors and humanity, naked and wordless.
Instincts—eating, drinking and bodily functions—drive us. We search for satisfactory ways to please ourselves. We propel toward our uncertain futures with blind self-adoration, and for those first few months, maybe a year or two, we are our life in its most concentrated form.
During the next seven or eight decades we become diluted, filled up with waterous thoughts, language, expectations, and experiences. We gain the ability to somewhat satisfy ourselves in every arena from sex to career.
Our other goal is to avoid pain as much as possible. We wail at the slightest bit of emotional, spiritual or physical discomfort. We become bloated, self-aggrandized, and then, when we finally figure out how to make things go our way—most of the time—life takes its final turn, and we begin to deflate.
As our mates leave us, and our friends and family trickle into nursing homes or relatives’ homes, we realize that all we’ve built up is beginning to dissolve. We lose our water and distill, leaving concentrated versions of ourselves, only now we have memories, fears, hates and hurts thrown into the concoction.
Mother is at this final stage during which we all reduce to our own cosmic juice and revert back to some pretty potent pulp. She is no longer interested in betterment, learning or growing. She is tart, almost bitter, and that makes it hard to want to spend time with her. She doesn’t seem to have the ability or inclination to be nice. It’s all about her now, and it doesn’t matter whether I have a hangnail or a tumor; it wouldn’t register.
Whatever Mother has accumulated along the way is now strong and unpleasant to those of us who live in a watered-down world. I see the things that remain. She can recall a moment of jealousy or disappointment from forty years ago and gnaw on it for days. Most of the actual events, people, and moments she once held so tightly are now forgotten.
I now understand something: we are what we are; the only way we can add to ourselves is by experiencing something powerful enough to alter our belief system. If Mother were naturally trusting, she would continue to trust. But since fear has become so entwined, it’s now a part of her concentrated self and must play itself out to the end.
I’m Carol O’Dell.
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