Glitter and Glue

by Kelly Corrigan

making this girl homesick in her own home.

So tender

And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.

So potently true! It's the thing I've felt the most judged for, and the most swept away by.

But now I see there’s no such thing as a woman, one woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should’ve figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all that Motherness blocking out everything else?

So true-- painful and beautiful. It took so long to really "see" my own mother. And it's so easy to judge our mothers, through our own "enlightened" mother eyes.

sturdy though my mother was, she must have been gutted by the sound and sight and sheer vibration of her rabid daughter roaring, I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR GUTS! I HATE YOU FOREVER! I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.

Wowowow! Really hits home. Falling back in love, is that much more challenging, with a child who pushes back, or who you struggle with. It's a life long love affair.

Of course, maybe there’s nothing about any of us that doesn’t in some small way touch back to our mothers. God knows, every day I spend with the Tanners, I feel like I’m opening a tiny flap on one of those advent calendars we used to hang in the kitchen every December 1, except instead of revealing Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, it’s my mother. I can’t see all of her yet, but window by window, she is emerging.

So powerful… makes me wonder about my mother, and also my daughter

What is it about a living mother that makes her so hard to see, to feel, to want, to love, to like? What a colossal waste that we can only fully appreciate certain riches—clean clothes, hot showers, good health, mothers—in their absence.

Do we wait for our mothers to die, before we set aside our egos enough to acknowledge their role in who we are? And are our mother's riches only measured in tasks and things she did? Laundry, good healthy, etc?? This, this is heart wrenching.

How can I tell him that I was a dog in show, high-stepping with my shiny hair and sparkly striped collar? Twelve years and two puppies later, I’m an ungroomed bitch who barks at flies.

Hysterically true!

But what compressed her into an old woman, what made her bones heavy and her joints stiff, what used her up, wasn’t the labor. It was the bottomless worrying and wanting and hoping.

Heartbreaking, THIS guts me.

Raising people is not some lark. It’s serious work with serious repercussions. It’s air-traffic control. You can’t step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.

AMEN!! Air traffic control is such a perfect metaphor