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On Mothering the Self
If only the people-pleaser in me could learn to please me
Walking to the car it seemed important to decide whether we’re ascending or descending. Whether this is a striving toward lightness or a leaving behind of lightness into something sturdy and profound. On this walk of 20 yards I see judgment and insecurity (aren’t they one and the same) for the first time as something frivolous and effervescent, and they become less potent. Like helium balloons, they might fly up and away from me and pop somewhere out of sight, if I can let them go. Maybe the pain of holding on to them is worse than watching them get away. But what will take their place?
Siri narrates my texts now, in this comparatively suburban place where a lot of time is spent in cars. Serenity now. Expressionless emoji, she says. He says. He is making sense of my parents’ old things, stored in the city we now call home, since 10 years ago, when they decided to stop calling it home. But the emoji with the flat eyes and flat mouth is anything but expressionless. It is a pausing to endure something unpleasant or uncomfortable without reacting to it. He is very good at this. I can learn something about this from him. I’m in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, where expressionlessness is called for, until a hand two cars ahead reaches out to another hand to take a milkshake, like The Creation…
