Be mother: an introduction
Good morning, Creation—
A couple days ago, a childhood memory boiled. I was in an old school house on Mackinac Island. The school house served as a museum of child life 100 years ago. The air inside the white box room smelled like little ghosts. I must have been 7 years old, wandering between the pupils’ desks—desks of the late 1800s early 1900s. There were black and white pictures of the children hanging on the walls, their eyes shooting through the old photograph paper like white lasers, their spirits time traveling through. I felt like I was one of them, and in that moment, I was. Imagination spoke to me and took on their voices, their little bodies, their energies. I ran my hands across the wood of their desks, desks they too touched. I looked out the windows they once looked out of and I tasted the sun. It was spilling through the ozone, down across Lake Huron and into the thin glass windows of the school house; up through my nose and briefly onto my tongue. That sunlight tasted like cold lake water, peonies, and the color orange.
I spoke to the children in my mind—I spoke to the desks, the fractured pencils on display behind glass cases, the relics of these little lives at school before all those world wars took over them. I spoke, through my mind, to everything—everything had spirit, a voice, a vibration. Everything was energy, alive then and alive now. It spoke in feeling, and synesthesia. I soaked it in. And then my father took my hand and we left. Onwards, through the horse-dung streets of the island to buy sweet Mackinac Island fudge whose recipes were as old as the school house itself. That beautiful island truly was (perhaps still is?) overpowered by the smells of horse shit and sweet old-world fudge. Often together. How hilarious Creation’s juxtapositions sometimes are.
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So what does this have to do with Creation? What does this have to do with being a mother? Mothering?
My explanation may lose you because I’ll be honest, I often lose myself in my explanations but so it is, so I am! Here it is: since becoming a mother to Rain and now being 30 weeks pregnant with a little girl, I have slowly realized that through my journey of motherhood and mothering, I have actually been on a journey home to the most quintessential essence of myself.
What is the essence of self?
I’ve come to observe that it’s not an identity but instead, a state of be-ing.
I’ve come to observe, at least in my experience, that this essence is characterized by an innocent energy — the energy of child. It’s the same state of being you embody as a baby, a toddler, even a teenager—still new to the world, floating in the womb of Creation, and not yet totally initiated to the matrix of ego, society, adult life and responsibility. It is the state of being before the “Vasanas” and karmic issues our minds cling to take over our life, our experience. In short, this essence is freedom. Floating. Just being yourself, however that unfolds moment by moment.
Motherhood and Mother-ing:
Through my son, Rain, through observing him grow, playing with him, and being his mother I have experienced a very strong return to this original essence. The prime characteristic of this essence is being and engaging with this moment and no other moment. The memory of the school house is the perfect description of what a total-moment experience can be like for me these days: where everything has a voice, a feeling, a vibration of aliveness. And it all becomes me. Takes me over like a storm soaks land.
And I observe a similar sense of being take place within Rain as we play, as we wander these desert back roads in Arizona. We move together through the air like water, like swimming. We are floating and moving through the womb of a Great Creation. I don’t know how else to describe it, and I am sharing this publicly because I believe that we are all floating in this womb, but we forgot. We’ve let go or stopped giving attention and energy to that quintessential essence of ourselves — the ability to float. It is, perhaps, the purest, free-est dimension among all the possible dimensions we can experience as a human in life on Earth.
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I know what I write gets “too deep” for comfort sometimes, and yes, part of my character is very serious. But again, so it unfolds! Why deny what I am, what is so natural? We all complete a piece of this Creative puzzle, anyways so it must be my job to show up like this. I tell you that because it’s been a big halt in my sharing. But now, especially through mothering, I know I have no choice but to be and share myself just as I show up. If that’s what I cultivate in Rain, I must cultivate it in myself too.
And with that note, here’s what I have to say next:
We were all born to this Creation, and eventually we will all die from it. Is human life after this “fall from childhood innocence” really meant to be so stressful, so matrix-y, so boring and limited by time and space, so trapped? I, for one, know that I don’t want to live my life that way. I would much rather learn to gracefully and consciously oscillate between my adult responsibilities and the total-experience of my childhood essence—that original creative power I am getting reacquainted with through my children. And every time I have a task in this matrix of adult life, I’ve been sprinkling a little of this essence on top and it transforms into something vibrant, and full of wonder! Why on earth would I exchange that for anything else? I’m also finding that every action suddenly has the smell of joy. How could I give that up now that I’ve allowed it back in?
This essence is not unique to me. Whoever you are, you have it too. Perhaps it’s very alive and present in your experience of life in the day-to-day, moment by moment—
Or, perhaps like me for quite awhile, it’s felt buried and forgotten.
This “newsletter” and project serves as my own documentation of it, but much more than that, I am hoping it serves as a catalyst and invitation to engage with Creation and the creation-of-you for yourself. Maybe, you’ll even feel called to share it here with me, with others; talk about it, give it attention, time and energy . We shall see.
On that note, I will end this first document with a song of the day — chosen randomly by Siri from my Shazam’d trips around the world since 2016:
Artist: Cola Boyy Song: Beige 70 (Dominique Dumont Bilingual Remix)
And a pictures of Rain’s and my yesterday:
Without further ado, this is Be mother—consistent doses of motherhood’s magic in my life, your life, our lives—addressed to Creation itself, most mornings.