Still Sundays

May 8th.

The color of dreams. Gifts of stillness are for your own mantelpiece. Truth can be served with sugar or a sting. Mothers like nature must continue evolving.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.


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New York City this morning is bright with reflective dreams that belong to all.

 

Sometimes I think the color of dreams is green. I don’t mean a specific dream. I mean when we encounter the emerald, olive, asparagus, lime, shamrock, pear greens as we walk through spring. The vibrant, lush, greens spread beyond the leaves and takes us to woolgathering about dreams that we barely recall. As if the leaves want to exhale the oxygen of memories that we want to forget but need to remember.

 

An article about the ‘anxiety of influence’ took me back to two different Sundays some time ago. I read through some old “Still Sundays” and felt very much how one feels when looking at a collection of shells one has collected from a walk along the shore. The ocean of stillness is deep and vast and the shoreline has all sorts of trinkets and shells. Some feel rather ordinary, others unique. Some have value according to traders and others have no value although they still mean the world to you.

The gifts collected from the sea of stillness are for your own mantelpiece.

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I was speaking to author David Weedmark about the warped, pretentious maze that is the publishing industry. I told him I am not interested in anything else but the act of writing. He said, “Think of it as being paid nicely to do what you love.” My brain didn’t register the words.

“Do what I love?”

He replied, “Yes. Think of it as doing what you love and being paid for it.”

I said, “I don’t know.” I couldn’t believe I said that. I finally added, “I think I just have a compulsion, an obsession; I am not sure if it is love.”

I thought of all the interviews where some author (well-known or otherwise) is passionately articulating how much they love writing despite the hard work and I couldn’t help thinking: when will I love you? If I have to ask, it is not love, right? When will it no longer feel like an obsession or compulsion but transform into some kind of love? I love words, I know that much, without a doubt. But words are like stars, I can only see so much of the sky.

 

Someone said that my ‘process’ is so transparent given I share quite a bit, either here or over at my online Vault, from what I am researching, what authors I am re-reading, to music, art and photography I like.

What is there to hide? Besides experience has shown me transparency can lead to invisibility. Poof. Vanish. No one can really see anyway, everyone sees what they want to see.

 

Sometimes I feel my father was right after all: my sister and I are like honey bees. We don’t really want much but fly flower to flower, smelling, appreciating, buzzing, creating some nectar. But bees can and do sting. Bees can even kill. Truth can be served with sugar or a sting; hopefully no one is allergic or suffers from diabetes of the mind.

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Mother’s day. Another set-aside commercial holiday. One day set aside to honor the woman whose food you shared while you were living inside her for some months. One day. As if we are not capable of honoring every day. Or are we not?

What if on mother’s day we also honored all those who turned out more than just fine despite having self-absorbed mothers who didn’t know what it meant to have a baby? Mothers who felt their own wants were more important than the impact of those wants on their children. What if on mother’s day we also honored those who learned compassion, love, strength, and much more through some other source having lost their mother at a young age?

What if on mother’s day we honored fathers who have had to step in the role of a mother due to women who were unable to fulfill that role? No, father’s day doesn’t suffice because they had to be mothers too.

 

I am very blessed to have my mother. I don’t take this for granted.

I can still recall when I was very young and the teacher asked the class who was our hero to prepare us for some assignment. I heard other students’ answers and due to a cultural gap I was not able to tell that they were not naming people they knew but “famous” people, dead and alive.  When my turn came to answer, I confidently said, “My mother.” The teacher thought it was cute and asked me again as if I hadn’t understood. I thought maybe I should say spider-man or wolverine but decided to answer the same, again. The teacher said, “Oh that is very sweet and good but other famous people like your classmates have mentioned that you and the world look up to.” I thought to myself: but I don’t know those people! I did feel stupid but I also knew that when I know I know; I didn’t change my answer.  The teacher moved along to another student who named someone famous. For the assignment I was assigned Helen Keller.

 

Another time, now in my early 20s, a teacher myself, I was quite offended when someone said, “Oh, given what you say about your father and what I know about him and the rest of your siblings, it seems your mother is a wonderful supporter” as if it was beneath whatever image this woman held of who my father was and how we were.

I replied, “I could win the most prestigious awards and accomplish all that I desire and it would never amount to as much if I could only be half—just half—as great a woman, friend, wife, mother and above all else, human being, as my mother. If that, I would have accomplished all in this lifetime.”

The unpleasent woman retorted, “That is quite some pressure, no? To always compare yourself to your mother?”

I had never compared myself to my mother. She had always encouraged our differences and for me to be me.

I stung, “I guess if there is any pressure it is to be myself, compassionately but without apology.”

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Most people know that I have a very close relationship with my mother that is neither intrusive and nor overbearing. We travel together when there is an opportunity; we enjoy doing nothing together when we can be in the same city. We miss our sister and sister-in-law when those two are not with us. What most people don’t know is that our relationship wasn’t always like this. Growing up it was almost good enough for a mother and daughter relationship, but no, not like this.

What has made it like this is personal development. I have grown up because the woman I admire has grown up too. She can’t expect that her children grow and develop if she is not willing to. She has done more than her share to deconstruct and learn anew.

 

Two things I admire most in my mother: her ability to be in the present without any new age wisdom or religious dogma (it is as if she was born in the now and it is always now!) and the other is her desire to learn and grow, which means releasing her attachment to much she once knew or as she once understood.

My mother says life is all about relationships, for they teach us who we are and about living. She says the danger is people think they need to be ‘in’ a particular relationship (she doesn’t mean only heterosexual partnerships) in order to learn how to relate, learn about themselves, or others. But being ‘in’ does mean opening up.

My mother is constantly reminding us to let go of who people no longer are and accept them for who they have become and decide in the now if that is an acceptable relationship.

 

My mother is my hero because she is the sunlight that doesn’t need photoshop.

 

 

This morning I asked my mother—-the eternal question I have been asking since I can recall—“How does she—how did she—manage without her mother?”

Mama says nature is a mother; it doesn’t take away without giving you what you need to make without.

Mama says all nurturing, caring, creating is a form of being a mother and we are offered many relationships other than our biological ones to nurture our and others’ potential if we so choose.

 

I am grateful to my mother every day for reminding us that when unconditional love doesn’t enable but offers reflection, it can provide the grandest shield against a world that no longer believes love triumphs fear.

 

11 responses to “Still Sundays”

  1. So many pauses for me in this piece Annie.

    “No one can really see anyway, everyone sees what they want to see.”

    and

    “Mama says all nurturing, caring, creating is a form of being a mother and we are offered many relationships other than our biological ones to nurture our and others’ potential if we so choose.”

    I am mother to two birth children with a bond that runs uniquely deep with both. I also have a range of relationship with six step-children. Some of these relationships are as step-mother or like a special aunt and others are as wife to their dad and a woman they care about and respect. Each is a special relationship with another human-being.

    I think about today my relationship to my own mother which grew from a contention one when I was a child to one of shared enjoyment by the time I became a mother.

    I think about my sister who is 12 years younger than I am and in someways was my first child even though I left home by the time she was five years old.

    Your mama’s words make room for all these aspects of my mother’s day thoughts and reflection.

  2. Becky says:

    Beautiful Annie, as are you.

  3. nayla says:

    It is a beautiful piece of writing seems like a painting ..but of words,sentences and emotions.

  4. Teresa says:

    Beautiful, rich and yet, uncanny. In these words “Mama says all nurturing, caring, creating is a form of being a mother and we are offered many relationships other than our biological ones to nurture our and others’ potential if we so choose.” your Mama describes my soul-family. Born of a need to connect in the face of too much that at once lacked everything.

    I am grateful to you and all of my soul-family.

    Hugs and butterflies,
    ~T~

  5. Sandra Lee says:

    Annie,
    *Still Sundays* is a beautiful meandering river of musings that captivate me. Today, I love gazing at your dreamy thoughts of green. Then the currents move to the loving, authentic, pragmatic, and compassionate aspects that you and your mother share in a deep sacred bond. A heart-felt thank you for your thoughts today, and taking me to the place of, “As if the leaves want to exhale the oxygen of memories that we want to forget but need to remember.”

  6. […] As if the leaves want to exhale the oxygen of memories that we want to forget but need to remember. […]

  7. tish says:

    I’ll ♥ your writing…you just keep obsessing 😉

  8. kari m. says:

    Really wonderful! Thank you.

  9. The color of dreams as green is such a perfect metaphor–dream thoughts and images as the tender-green new growth, budding in the garden of the subconscious. You give some lovely description of all the greens of spring that feed that growth within. The stairs reflected in water–leading up, leading down below a translucent surface–is a little snapshot of truth. So much in that picture.

    When I first learned to write stories in early gradeschool, I loved to write. I would write more than I was supposed to and recopy it in crowded, tiny printing to fit the two-page limit. Later in school and through college years, I hated, really hated to write as the assigned topics piled up and piled on. (I really have utter disbelief at a teacher who would deny your heart-spoken choice of a personal hero–your own mother–and reassign you another! Bad teaching and disrespectful of a child’s personhood!) Now, at last, I like to write again, when an idea seizes me, when I can choose. I still bristle at “assignments” and I have to be careful not to give myself too many at once!:) I LOVE to read, but I like writing–very different!

    Thanks for your special reflections on mothers, mothering, and your mama, with her sunlight radiance.

    ~lucy

  10. LunaJune says:

    What a wonderful relationship.. and just from what you share of it.. it makes me glow :~)
    I’m so glad you held your ground with your teacher.
    Celebrating the wonderful life givers everyday

  11. Terri says:

    Simply beautiful Annie. Your Still Sundays lives in an open window much of the time on my laptop….

    I completely connect with your compulsion to write – it is that way with me as well. Many days I longed to feel the love of writing and have felt “wrong” for not loving to write. Today I understand and accept that my love of writing manifests first as a driving need. The quiet satisfaction follows….

    As always I am so very grateful for your presence.

    xoTT