I'm Just Like Her!

So, what about motherhood, anyway?

Some female someone, at one exact moment, conceived us, set is in motion.  Half of that person is rummaging around in our being as we live our own lives, showing up strangely in the middle of a sentence, or as the wrinkle at the corner of our eye, the lilt of our voice when we're calling to someone across the yard, or when we fling a towel over our shoulder and pat our hands dry -- exactly like she did.

Just when we think we are pleasingly unique and have got the good sense to know exactly who we are, that half of us, the half that was our mother before us, overtakes us and says, "You are exactly like me."

Oh, dear.

So, if that female, your mother is half of you, then half of that half is your grandmother and half of that is your great grandmother, and then genetics and all its implications pile you into a chair and you blubber with incomprehension, suddenly feeling confused about who you actually are.  It could be said you are comprised of a lot of other people; you are all of them in a new form, a new version of all who came before you.

Some cultures (and I agree with them on a biologically practical level) are matrilinear.  The mother side of the family matters in heritage and legacy.  The mother passes the energy packets (mitrochondria) carried within our cells to her children; the father does not.  Fathers are required, important, needed, of course, but the significance of what they pass from one living being to another is not the essence of life:  Energy.  It's a digression, perhaps splitting hairs, but it's significant.

I am only saying you cannot not know anything about your mother, because the very life force of her cells is within each of yours.  She is within you, you consist of her, she is you.

So, from the depths of your incomprehension and doubts about where you begin and your mother leaves off, God only knows, truly.

Today, Mother's Day, we are most of us following impulses to do something for our mothers, express our love and gratitude for their selfless giving and support.  It's the idealized version of the symbolic Mother, really.  We know that not all mothers are up to snuff; some fail miserably and some rule with iron fists worthy of Zeus.  Whatever our mothers are or were, they live on in us, showing up at the weirdest times, energizing us, providing a link to the time-shrouded past when the very first mother looked at the very first child and said, "Wait until your father gets home."