Mother

Originally Posted Monday, May 13, 2013

The clouds, heat, and humidity begin to build.  The blue skies of the past months will soon become broken, then gray.  The gray is not bad in the summer, for it blocks the sun and brings the rain and keeps things cool. 

But yesterday's late afternoon cooled and the bugs have not yet come out.  I cooked a Mother's Day meal, and we were able to eat on the deck once again, maybe the last time before the bugs and heat and humidity drive us inside.  And it was lovely. 

I am quite a good simple cook.  I make basic things interesting.  And now there is a beautiful yard and I am fixing the place up in other ways, too.  I will entertain again, I think, once I have things as I want them, or nearly so.  I once read an article titled "Ou habitez-vous."  The author took the question to be a profound one.  It is as important as any, perhaps.  Someone said, and I can't remember who, first you shape the environment, then the environment shapes you.  And so I am putting my house in order once again.  Little by little, step by step, every day.  It is amazing how much there is to do. 

The woman in the picture is not a mother, though to me she looks the embodiment of fertility and motherly love.  Perhaps I am simply a bad judge of such things.  She has reached the age of decision about this and is resolved to live another kind of life.  I know many who have.  Years ago, I read the results of a survey of parents who had grown children.  Asked if it was worth it, if they had the chance would they do it again, the answer was a surprising and overwhelming "No!"  I was floored.  But the sacrifice, they said, was not worth the reward. 

This is not something about which I can opine, but I've always suspected that my own mother wishes she had more than one child, that somehow I did not quite live up to her expectations.  I don't know.  Perhaps she would say it was not worth it, too.  And truly, if you think about your relationship with your parents and try to think about how satisfying you have been. . . well, even if you have been nice and have been something of a success, you will probably come to the conclusion that you were, indeed, not worth the trouble.  Perhaps that is what haunts our unconsciousness.  If not, I think, it should. 

If there seems to you to be no continuity to this entry, you are right.  I have written and deleted three or four times more than what appears here now.  Too many incriminating opinions, there were.  For me, there is truly no reward in it.  Opinions, perhaps, are like children in this and best left to others.