Mother’s Day Coverfolk
(On learning to love the self in the other)
May 13th, 2012 — 07:54 pm
I’ve written about my father several times here on Cover Lay Down, citing him as a friend and fellow folkfan whose companionship I cherish, especially now that I have children of my own. I’ve written about my wife, too, and my children, when the occasion warranted it. But other than a 2008 feature on Mothers of the Folkworld, we’ve skipped over Mother’s Day for four years running – leaving my own mother conspicuously absent from these virtual pages.
If I’ve avoided taking the time to parse the particulars of our often volatile relationship until now, it is because for most of my adult and adolescent life, I did not understand it. But though I cannot and should not claim to know anyone as well or better than I know myself, after years of therapy and soul-searching, I think I have come far enough to take an awkward step towards explicating my avoidance of the topic until now.
The things I have inherited from my mother run deeper and more complex. From her come ADHD tendencies and a high propensity for disorganization, a deep need for social and interpersonal connection, a teary sensitivity to the world. Though it is these same raw and specific qualities, I think, which allow me to experience such deep and profound joy and solace in the universe, the exposure to the emotive elements which results also leaves me in a particularly poor place to negotiate truces when I must.
Instead, these innate characteristics, and the confusion that they often cause within me, leave me wandering the earth with an innate feeling of fragility. And the knowledge that I contain such multitudes can lead to poor choices: a carelessness with words and action that often worsens when I let my guard down around those who I know too well; a snowblindness to other opinions that comes across as disrespect; a propensity to overreact to small things, and thus magnify my distress.
And if I have learned anything in my almost forty years, it is that where one person in such a situation can mitigate and manage the delicate self through care and community and introspection, people of this particular type are ill-equipped to support each other, or indeed to come to terms with each other.
The result is a particularly bittersweet relationship, and I know that my mother and I both regret that we have not yet been able to overcome that which we share to grow closer, and more respectful towards each other.
It’s hard to love in another what you struggle with in yourself – hard, too, to pair such characteristics across the table and expect clarity in understanding. Living with my mother is more often than not a tightrope walk of polite watchfulness in our relations. Even when we find ourselves in moments or months of balance, the voice in my head that cannot so easily trust is always working to push me back down the mountain to its base, where I must begin the Sisyphean struggle anew, for the sake of our family, and our families.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my mother. I admire how hard she worked to maintain a family in my childhood, when my father was working long and absent hours to give us the lifestyle he and she agreed was best for all of us. I appreciate the words of comfort and support she has offered me in my hours of need, even if I could not and would not hear them wholly in the moment. My parents’ divorce several years ago gave me a chance to see her for herself, and the opportunity to watch her grow and thrive as a person of faith and innate optimism. And the ways in which this – all of this – has illuminated my own sins and challenges, clearing the path for me to make peace with my own faults and failures, and through them, to make peace with her, is easily acknowledged, though it remains elusive in my grasp as a tool for relationship building.
I cannot claim to have finished my journey; if I am not yet ready to come out and say that my mother is my friend, it is because of that which I cannot yet love in myself. But although I am hardly a praying man, my mother’s urgings towards meditation have not gone unheeded; I know, and hope she sees, that on my own side of that proverbial table, I have been gathering strength for a peace between us, one that grows more urgent even as it grows closer every day of our lives. And I know, too, because she has shown me, that faith is not only possible, but a vital cornerstone to a life lived honestly, and well.
To my mother, then: to whom I owe not only life, but the abilities and lessons that let me feel and see such life as a joyous, wondrous miracle every day. For that, I love her deeply, if not yet so well. And with that love at my back I will work until my final breath to forge and solder the ties that bind us, until our relationship is something we can both cherish and celebrate together.
- Suzy Thompson: Mama Loves (trad.) [via]
- J. Tillman: New Mama (orig. Neil Young) [via]
- The Seldom Scene: Mama Tried (orig. Merle Haggard) [via]
- Ekrindul: Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud (orig. Elliot Smith) [via]
- Iris Dement: Mom and Dad’s Waltz (orig. Lefty Frizzell) [via]
- The Morning Benders: Mother and Child Reunion (orig. Paul Simon) [via]
- Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt: This Is To Mother You (orig. Sinead O’Connor) [via]
- Matt Skinner: Mother’s Little Helper (orig. The Rolling Stones) [via]
- Alan Cohen: Your Mother Should Know (orig. The Beatles) [via]
- Neville Skelly: Mother Nature’s Son (orig. The Beatles) [via]
- Peter Mulvey: Every Mother’s Son (orig. Chris Smither) [via]
- Brooks Williams: Mother Earth (orig. Memphis Slim) [via]
- Jay Brannan: Good Mother (orig. Jann Arden) [via]
- Roseanne Cash: Motherless Children (trad.) [via]
- Shelby Lynne: Mother (orig. John Lennon) [via]