My Mama's Magic

To My Magic Mama

No two people remember life the same way. The ways that I remember you are my own but they are important. I did not understand Motherhood until I was crossing that threshold. When they pulled the little lion from my tummy and held him in the space above me, I was screaming inside louder than he was screaming outside. There has been a terrible mistake. I can't do this. I am not a mother. I am still a child. Put him back inside my tummy. Please put him back inside where I can protect him within the fortress of my body. Then he was heavy on my chest with an indescribable weight that has never lifted.

Then I became a wolf...the kind of wolf that you were when they advised you to abort the baby bird because her big brother had cerebral palsy. It was then that I understood how you had taken the gun point-first right out of the thief's hand as too many little girls in black dresses stood weeping outside the church. You told him his mother would be ashamed of him and he certainly was. This Motherhood thing was a beautiful, terrible, irrevocable gnashing of the woman I had been and the woman I had in that instant become. It wasn't a choice. It wasn't a process. I was instantaneously stripped of my former self and a new sentience had taken my place. I was no longer your daughter, I had become your sister in Motherhood. Yet before I was a Mother, you taught secrets to your daughters.

In the same way that you took the gun from the thief as easily as if he were your own child to redirect in a mistake, you took people's words, their attitudes, and their opinions. You honored another's position as long as it did no one else harm but you did not accept an idea that you had not first owned through careful contemplation. When the countryside aunties were afraid for me because “everyone knows” that an animal may steal a baby's breath as it sleeps. You did not separate me from the careful devotion of the Wulfit tribe. You let them all curl up around me in my crib as I slept. You trusted them not only because they were a family that obviously cared for each other but they were also a part of our family. From this, I learned that nine very loud and related Siamese will always and ever protect a child while purring sweet dreams. You taught that those aunties weren't wrong for their fears, they just understood life very differently. What makes sense to one person based on their experiences, may not hold true for another. We must allow for the differences in human perception while remaining true to our own understanding because we want to allow for and be allowed to manifest our best realities.

Down the hall from the room painted golden, where cats slept around and upon me, there lived a curious statue. It was carved in the likeness of a mythological beast who mostly just sat there politely. He often wore a black fedora with a sprig of mistletoe upon his brow as he contemplated the mysteries in silence. He never said a word. I never once saw him breathe. Yet he was unusually lifelike to me. Sometimes I could see a shiver down his spine. Sometimes I caught the glimmer of a grin on his cheeks. Occasionally, I would look back one instant too slow to catch him shifting on his haunches. I always walked by him with caution but he was a very good listener. It was clear that he was not from around these parts and so I guessed he must be a traveler, like me. On sunny afternoons when I felt very bold, I would tell him all the places I wanted to go.

One day I wished for a tutu. The next time I skipped into his room, there was a gift hidden behind his back. I was sure it hadn't been there from the start but it didn't matter. The whole thing was impossible. After all, that mythological marvel had been the only one in that temple of learning when I asked him. Why did this moment seem so important, anyway? First of all, you had taught me to love a library because it was where we spent time reading together. Secondly, I had made a wish that came true. Thirdly, and I now know it was you because Dad was not so talented with tulle, you had given a marvelous gift without taking credit. You never once let on that it had been from you. From this, I learned that life is magical. Nothing is impossible. Not everything needs to be explained. It is sometimes an even better gift not to take credit for an excellent gift.

Shel Silverstein once wrote a poem about needing to make the magic for himself. So I wondered a lot about whether magic was magic if someone else had a hand in making it? But you taught me that magic is not about how something happens. Magic is that uplifted feeling that possibility prevails. It's the starlight swirling through a black velvet birthday cape when your car needed new tires. It is not a necessity (like unto flowers) and it cannot be possessed. You showed me that people need magic for magic is hope and that hope is faith in things we do not have to understand. To this day, you have not claimed that tutu and someone removed the statue from our protection. I hope they treated him kindly for his amiable companionship to me. I do still wonder from time to time...all about that magic man bearing the fruits of imagination in his mythological hands.

You were also always practical. You did not take to flights of fancy. You were strong and steady as an ox. You faced many health challenges due to your relentlessness and yet you always knew you would receive a healing. Your certainty in this reprieve has steadied me in terrifying waters. We might stumble in too deep but we will always swim our way back into the cool, clear shallows. Your commitment to benevolent outcomes was as unfailing as your conviction that every human regardless of the appearance of circumstances, deserved a good defense. You were an advocate for truth and of uplifting an underdog who erred on the side of freedom or of justice. You championed the value of all life as a precious, sacred gift to be protected while still teaching us to respect another's right to choose the path to be taken in their life...inside their flesh and with their known capacities to be considered. You advised us to learn both sides of an issue before leaping to biased conclusions. You believed in equal opportunities for everyone, in years (and in states) where “everyone” could not even imagine what that meant for themselves.

You taught us political activism. You lobbied congressmen and wrote legislation contributing to the passage of the A.D.A. You taught us to find beauty in every person and every situation. You taught us loyalty to others without self-sacrifice. Yet you sacrificed yourself with grace to and for us daily. You taught us that mothers must often choose the best thing for their children instead of the best thing for themselves. When I walk through the collection of crosses lining your walls, I think of all those self-sacrifices of Parenthood. It also reminds me of rows of military men and women lying in graves who gave their lives in defense of something they dearly treasured. What was it they were fighting for? Our country? Our portion of the blessed Mother Earth? Our resources which can never truly be owned and that belong to everyone yet must also be protected from someone and something that takes without the capacity to give back? What they were truly fighting for was the health and safety of their families from threats within and without. Our fathers and your brothers each served different branches proudly. You taught us their company songs and we sang them out of respect and in celebration. Therefore were we taught to honor those who selflessly safeguard the well-being of others while simultaneously protecting the Earth.

I once was a ballerina who would get nervous before the shows. I could always count on you to appear backstage with a make-up box and a pep talk which would make everything better for everyone. It was a big yellow makeup box that seemed full of sunshine. There was a large and smiling frog holding balloons painted on the outside of that box. Next to his greenness were written the words “Mama's Magic”. That box contained many wonderful things like unto Pandora's because you had to know when and where to wear what: What eyeliner here? What scent was right there? What colors would set off your eyes? We learned how people may wear makeup for beauty but also as armor to become bulletproof on stage. Each occasion in life called for a different costume. So every time you changed metaphysical space, you changed clothes. While the essence of you was always the same, you could shift shapes like the clouds on a windy day. Each image of you was so different and yet your heart was unchanging, ever-present, and ever-loving. Yes, there could be sharp edges but we knew it all as part of an unconditional love that would ever and always result in a feeling of positive regard for ourselves and towards others. To me, you always seem most beautiful by the sea but wherever you are for as long as I have known you, you have dressed yourself every day and in a good way just for the occasion of being alive.

An uncomfortable woman once asked you what you thought you had taught your children. You told her you had taught them to be kind and to love Jesus. I would argue for so very much more. You also taught us that Jesus was an enlightened master, a traveling teacher, a magician, and a miraculous healer who befriended, included, learned from, and appreciated every being he encountered of any faith and in any station of life. You taught us that anyone might be an angel in disguise bearing a divine message. You taught us to treat everyone with the respect and the regard with which we wished to be treated. You taught us that appearances can be deceiving and that our intellect and intuition should be trusted above and beyond the words we hear being spoken. You taught us to study hard those things we truly wished to understand. You taught us that patience and persistence are always rewarded. You taught us that women needed many different types of toolboxes and that we should never be reliant upon someone else's.

So what was in mama's magic make-up box? It contained the tools for shifting, focusing, and surviving consciousness with beauty and grace, poise and kindness, forgiveness and loyalty, individuality and persistence, fearlessness and humor, compassion and patience. Once all the little backstage ballerinas had our make-up on, we could easily step outside of our frightened selves. We felt brave enough for the stage where we would wink and smile and dance unashamed of where we had been and undaunted by who we would need to become to bear the light of the next generation.