The binds we ask for

Family. It seems to have troubled me since not long after I entered it. I find it again to be my nature to dash headlong into one extreme from the other. So here I am again, readying myself at the starting block, and taking a moment to furrow my eyebrows. Motherhood seems to confuse me now as much as ever.

It was a great revelation to me when I first read in the Message that parents are meant to provide protection for their children. Although it sounds so obvious and completely natural, in that one sentence I traced my development back to a pivotal moment, when something in me decided that my parents were incapable of protecting me. I withdrew not from physical dependence on them, but rather I no longer trusted them with myself. Loved them, of course. Loved them even for those things they have yet to become conscious of, but I became, and still am, closed to them in a certain respect. And so many times I've felt the warmth of someone's protecting love stretched out toward me, and shuddered.

So back to Motherhood and Mothers. Such anger and bitterness wells up in me when she shows this weakness of remembering that which some hidden part of me wishes desperately to forget. She's remembered it secretly and openly for over 20 years now, and I've struggled and wriggled around it for just as long. There was swift anger, deep resentment, and written explosions to precede the peace between my father and I. My Mother is perhaps too much like myself to be engaged on that bloody but effective level. Too much like digging around in my own heart with my bare hands. The sun is setting on another beautifully clear February day, and I think I'm beginning to face it now. At least I want to, and that's the first step.