This is for my mother who would have been 106 years old on April 30 and who gave up riding horses to get married and have children. She was gifted in many ways, one of which was riding horses.
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On Mother's Day, I sat down at my drawing table with a piece of bristol board paper and a set of poétique watercolor brush pens that were given to me by a friend recently. With my left hand, I drew what was in front of me at my drawing table. Just now I finished what I had begun yesterday, adding words and letters and symbols to the background, all with my left hand. The Day of the Dead figure belonged to my mother who not only rode horses well but had the gifts of writing and of being able to be creative in so many ways.
Our relationship was difficult for reasons I will never fully know. Her relationship with her mother was difficult for reasons I will never fully know. Who knows how long that pattern was repeated. I have no children and will not carry on that pattern. I sense that my creative life is something that few mothers in my line were able to have. From what I could see, my mother experienced agonizing conflict regarding her life as a wife and mother. She pursued a creative life once my sisters and I were grown. When I sense her presence now, it is peaceful in a way it never was when she was alive.
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My grandmother and my mother in 1916 in Minnesota:
My mother and me in 1949 in California:
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6 comments:
Wouldn't it have been interesting to know our mothers when they were young? It would be great to travel back in time and get to know them before they were mothers.
It's a learning curve, this looking at and remembering of our mothers. When assessing we must learn to see also their deep-seated fears, their losses, the limitations of their time. It's never going to get easier.
My daughter and I are starting to get old enough that we can know each other as adults, it's very different. I come from a long line of women who got pregnant before they got married. The things we pass on:)
Our mothers and grandmothers were so suppressed it's a wonder they weren't all angry all the time. Well, I think they were but the patriarchy medicated them into submission. My mother had a drawer full of pills in her bedside table...valium, seconal, tuinal, nembutal. I read The Women's Room in the early 80s and while it is promoted as fiction it was based on women's actual experiences.
Your left-handed drawing interesting as you remember your Mother.
Mothers and daughters, so many mysteries between them, so much we can only guess at, but never truly know.
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