A creative spirit. Demanding. Operatic. Impossible. Yet love from her was unmistakable, without equivocation, and passionately unconditional.
Life as Irene’s daughter was a warm bath in complete maternal affection alternating with moments of abject loneliness and the terror of having her love withdrawn and being abandoned. When I angered her, it was either her wrath or her withdrawal of love. Between the two her wrath was the preferred punishment. To not be connected to that life force whose heart was as big as an ocean was too much to bear.
My mother was born July 3, in the sign of the mother — Cancer. Fiercely protective, she was singularly focused on nurturing me, my sister and a host of others in her family, her emotional life and ours were constantly on a roller coaster. Mine was a childhood full of parties, singing, and smoke-filled mah joohng games deep into the night. Her laughter was music. Her singing voice soared.
She worked all the time. She and Dad had to. He made a cook’s salary of $5,000 a year. In 1960 dollars, that equaled a $20,000 in today’s numbers. She worked for thirty years in a frozen food factory about two miles from our home in Watsonville, California. Together they afforded to buy two houses, and put me and my sister through private schools and ultimately college. “We will never deny you food or a good education. The rest is on your own.”
We often wonder what would have become of our mothers had they never had us. Would they have had the lives they dreamed of? I remember when I asked her those questions and her answer was her life itself. She loved being at home, being married, dancing, being with her friends and worrying obsessively about my sister and me. Yet, there was always something unfulfilled in her that when I was young, could never fathom. It wasn’t until years later that I found out she was an actress like me, and that she loved performing. Whatever platform separating us as mother and child had suddenly vanished. We had become equals on a deep creative plane. Taking a look at our charts, Uranus and Jupiter at 23 Cancer in the 5th house of family and creativity in my chart was exactly conjunct her Jupiter in the 11th in Cancer in the same degree. We met each other halfway around the wheel.
As she aged and her memories grew dim, it was our turn to obsessively worry about her. Her decline came with a series of small strokes which happened periodically over her late 60s and early 70s. She was already small when she was younger — four feet, ten inches tall when I was a kid. With age she had shrunk two inches shorter. In her old age and frailty, she became my sister’s and my child.
After going through the trauma of the sudden death of my father in my youth, the anticipation of my mother’s death in my middle age was an anxiety-ridden ordeal. It caused me to go into therapy to prepare for life without her. It was the fear of her ultimate withdrawal from me that filled me with dread so severe I was willing to die before her.
Through therapy, I came to that realization before she died. I was grateful our last days together were filled with peace. We let go of each other quickly and calmly. What followed was a new life. One lived well without her in it, yet not feeling I betrayed her because I continued to live.
It’s amazing how often an infant changes in appearance, moving from mother to father, back and forth throughout its development. That morphing between parents does not change throughout one’s life, and right now, after over fifty years of being told I look like my father, I see in the mirror that I really look a lot like my mother.
Blood, bone, chromosome. Wrinkle. cheek, jowl. I am looking at my face in the mirror of hers — remembering how she aged as I am aging now. Time and gravity have changed the roundness of my face, and the facial muscles that have been used the most — the laugh lines, the cheeks and jowls — are well-exercised and defined by the years. It’s almost as if laughter made both of our round faces square. I look at the stranger in the mirror — the one with my voice and thoughts, and I see her.
Two years after Mama passed, I was deep in kundalini meditation. In session, the teacher put his hands on each and every one of us while in our sitting state. The silence of the room was graced by the small tinkling of a bell he would use to keep us mindful during our practice. When he came to me, I felt his touch and heard his voice not with my ears but with my mind. He said, “your mother is gone. She has chosen to move on and incarnate into a new life. You are free.”
I wasn’t thinking about her, at least not consciously. But maybe I was. Maybe we both were thinking about each other at that moment. The relationship between Mother and child is longer than an umbilical cord and stronger than death.
It is a string connecting us from the roots in the earth into the levels of pure consciousness without form. And it is a cycle. Release. Birth. Life. Release. Close or not — and my mother and I were often not that close — we were still connected. She was letting me know she moves released — reborn into her next phase of being, while I am here released in this one, reborn as me.
Something primal has been touched by your writing, Fe, in each of us who commented and I am sure in many of those who haven’t. I am going to print this out and leave it with other personal things I am collecting for my daughter to have when I am gone. She will not know which were my comments, but she will know the heart and soul of the complexities that you touched on that tie us–all of us who are women– together in this mysterious relationship of birthing and creation of ourselves and one another. And thanks, Brendan, for your insight. Always love hearing your perspective.
Thanks again Fe, and thank you BR. “My mother was never well emotionally and it was always a difficult relationship for me, her first daughter”. This is exactly my situation with my mother, who is very elderly but still alive. I actually moved away from my country of birth, aged 23, to live in another country – yet I dread my mother’s passing away – and the idea that there will no longer be a ‘home’ to go back to, when my parents are no longer around. Your pieces have given me so much comfort, they so beautifully descibe the complexities of the mother/daughter relationship. I shall print them out and keep them in a safe place.
“I was shocked that as difficult as the relationship had been she had been supplying sustenance to me and my life that I was unaware of until she was gone. I now can see the positive gifts I received from her, actual parts of her beauty that are now growing and being lived out in me,”
BR:
Never were more truer words said about the remarkable, silent but solid legacy our mothers left us. You and I felt the exact same thing – and that there are times I feel something, or do something or have an AHA moment about the kind of thoughtfulness my mother put into her care – both before and after her death – of us.
My latent talents for cooking and rearing orchids — her gifts for me. Putting heart into a song. That’s her in me. Even a little catering business I’ve got going on — mama’s executive ability in handing big events (NNode in Taurus in the 2nd House). And these gifts still keep coming. Surprising, remarkable, and so full of her.
To this day, I still find myself weeping, full of love for her for sparing my sister and I the trauma of making decisions for her funeral — the complete opposite of what I had to endure as a child of 18 when pressed into service to make these adult decisions by myself when my father died suddenly, and my mother too much in shock to come to grips with my dad’s death.
She made sure, before she started losing her capacity to make rational decisions, that the arrangements for her services were taken care of. Imagine how my sister and I felt, understanding mama had it all ready. All we had to do on the day of her funeral was to remember her. And I still and always will.
Thank you for this poignant, alive piece of writring about your mother, Fe. I was struck by and resonated with your mentioning toward the end that you were not always close, but that did not stop you from fearing the loss of her love, and of abandonment. My mother was never well emotionally and it was always a difficult relationship for me, her first daughter. What shocked me when she passed was my sensation of a slight shift in the universe, that the order of things would always be different from that time on.The center of all our lives was removed. I was slightly disoriented. I also had a feeling that the roots I had put down in my life had been cut at the taproot. I had to start creating my own feeler rootlings, and shoot out a new taproot on my own. I was shocked that as difficult as the relationship had been she had been supplying sustenance to me and my life that I was unaware of until she was gone. I now can see the positive gifts I recerived from her, actual parts of her beauty that are now growing and being lived out in me, as you are living out more fully your mother’s love of dance and the arts. You are her flowering. What words are there to comment adequately on such beauty? Thank you, again.
elle:
In light of everything you have been through, I hope you’re out there on that same floor, dancing with your mother. She sounds like a girl after my own heart.
Fe –
In answer to your question, I’m thinking that we would probably be rather different than who we have proven to be. She has always been a great influence on me, much more so than my Pisces father was during those early years. He became more of an influence upon me as an adult, especially as I have come to find myself to be like him in many ways.
In spite of being a teacher herself, my mother was always rather tolerant of my very laissez faire attitude towards school. She realized well before I did that grades didn’t do much for me, rather it was knowledge and learning itself that drove me.
Daydreaming? HAH! Every day, every hour, which meant I wasn’t always there for the teachers, who would say as much to my folks. In turn, they would urge me, at least once, to pay more attention in class, and then we would all return to the status quo.
Nearly 82, she’s still helping, still watching out for us.
A stunning and inspiring piece, dear Fe. As soon as I get the chance I’ll grab pen and paper and write about my mother, and I’ll encourage other daughters (and sons!) to do the same. Thank you.
Liz x
Fe,
Wow.
Tears. Especially with your fear of your mother dying. I’m not the crying type.
I, too, lost my father at a young age, with a very surprising turn of events, car accident on 4.7.03.
Since then, I have had this undeniable fear that I am going to see that same fate for my mother.
Oddly enough, after my father died, my mother took it upon herself to really get to the heart of the matter in her life and decided to take dance classes. I never knew she was a dancer, even though I have been one literally since I came out of the womb.
It is amazing to see her, almost in her 60’s now and burning a hole in the dance floor.
My mother is a Sadge, 12.5.52 and she is adopted and I have never been able to figure out what time she was born. It does make her a Cancer Moon. Really, as all moms, there is nothing like her love. And yes, I am still willing to die before her, so I can make sure she gets to the other side okay.
~elle
Dear Fe,
I had tears in my eyes as I read your piece today. I was born on 3 July too and have two young daughters. I worry incessantly about them and whether I’m doing good job as a mother. Very often I think not. I’m always struggling between what my heart wants and what my ego drives me to, professionally. Both are at odds with each other. I tell myself its my sun-moon square in the natal chart that is to be blamed. Its a small consolation most of the time.
Thank you for sharing your story with all of us here.
with love
aisha
Brendan:
I wonder what we would be like without our Cancer moms keeping the pot of our Aquarian minds stirred? As a child, she was a lathe on my rebellious spirit and often daydreaming nature. I think for me as an adult, she was a reactivation of the heart. I was no longer separating myself from what I felt. It took years later to recognize what that was and to finally be able to express it.
Lovely, Fe — thanks for giving so much of yourself today.
Dear Fe,
Thank you for this. The love you have for her is plain to see, and you have given us such a wonderful glimpse of her (and you!).
My mother and yours share the same birthday, and in some ways you were describing my Mama. Those Cancer moms really know their stuff, don’t they?
This is a powerful piece Fe. Exquisite really.
“She was letting me know she moves released — reborn into her next phase of being, while I am here released in this one, reborn as me.” Oh my, I read that and tears welled in my eyes. I was very touched.
Thank you.
Thanks Len.
Thank you, Fe. So very beautiful and brilliant. Thank you for sharing your experience and insight.