I am not a mother. There have been several points over the last few years when I believed I was going to be, and that I would be soon however, this now seems like a distant possibility. I have always wanted to be a mother. When people meet me, they are usually introduced quite quickly to my ever-present feminist values, and then upon learning that I also long for motherhood they appear quite confused. There is this misconception that the modern feminist cannot possibly want to choose motherhood, but I don’t believe this. I have always wanted to be a mother, for as long as I can remember.
As I have grown I think the illusion that I can have it all has somewhat wained. In the current political and socioeconomic climate it is unrealistic. For many women it is still one or the other, it is career and financial success or it is motherhood; there does not appear to be a space that can hold the two in successful equilibrium. However, there are different versions of having it all and I have seen these flourish and thrive and they have made me see motherhood as a wonderful privilege that can be one of the great joys of life.
My own mother has taught me this, and I do not think she has done so on purpose. My mother is a remarkable woman, who has instilled humanity, principles and joy into the act of raising three of us tiny humans. I was born when my mother was twenty-one. I was not an on purpose baby, in fact my mother had made the decision that she was not going to have any children, as bringing new life into a world so dysfunctional seemed irresponsible to her, but she did choose to have me. She chose to nourish me. She chose to accept the responsibility of another life and put the current plans she had on hold. She had me in a hospital and for the entirety of her stay refused to relinquish me to one of those strange, plastic cots that you can see through, meaning she was confined to her bed, as the rules dictated that you were unable to physically carry your newborn child around the ward.
When she took me home she read me Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice and she played me Hole and Sonic Youth and I attribute all of these things to making me the person I am today. She hung art around the house at my height and, alongside my Uncle, created (what appeared to me as) full-sized cars fashioned out of cardboard that they then painted, whilst simultaneously painting me. I did not take naps and every time I cried I was picked up. I was a tiny person, with my own personality and my own autonomy from the beginning of my life, and this is the great luck of the draw, that it was my mother whom I happened to belong to.
I call my mother by her name, something she requested of all of us. I am a person she would always insist, not just a homogenous word. It is as I have grown older that I have begun to refer to her as mummy. I think it may have started as a joke, which has stuck, and I now cannot seem to shake the habit of. We have a relationship that is entirely unique; I never have and will never have another relationship that comes close to it in anyway. The parent/child relationship can be many things, and it can morph over time and it can shift and sway but ultimately it is always grounded in mutual love.
This love can make you behave in different ways. It can lead you to follow someone around all day, demanding their attention and getting on their nerves. It can provide spaces of safety and guarantee a peaceful night’s rest after endless bedtime stories. It can grow in shared interests; liking the same music, going to gigs, discussing books and art and culture and concepts and theory until one day the learning is a mutual transaction and not just one-way. It can manifest into something darker, periods of tension and dysfunction and me exclaiming that I hate you with much more venom than the typical angsty teenager could produce. It can lead you to not being able to conduct yourself in a manner that is safe or appropriate and it can lead to periods of separation and pain and grief.
My mother though is relentless in her love. She has always demonstrated compassion towards me, has always reminded me that I am loved, even in the times when I felt entirely unloveable. She dealt with the pain of not speaking with her eldest child, for long periods of time, so I had the space to sort out my own feelings and behaviour. And when that behaviour meant I was forced to go back to the family home, with my metaphorical tail between my legs, she was there for me to cry on, even after the abysmal way I had left her care.
She has continued to raise me, to parent me, with empathy and strength and humour. She has done this predominantly alone and she has guided me to extra avenues of support and never been selfish in sharing spaces or people that help us both. She is one of my closest friends, but I also know that she is more than that, because a mother can never really be a friend, because what they offer goes beyond anything to be found in any other relationship.
It is all these things, the life that I am living, the experiences I have had that have contributed to my overwhelming desire to have children of my own. My mother has tirelessly, every single day, demonstrated how you can be both mother and individual woman, how you can raise families, run homes and still live within feminist values. She shows me in every waking moment how you can have it all, it just depends what your attitude is. Having it all isn’t about money or status. It is about the kind of person you are, the impact you have on those around you, and the good that you bring to the world.
My mother brings so much good to the world. She brings humanity and joy and intelligence and understanding and love to everything she does. She is an artist, who creates powerful and beautiful work. She is a teacher, who facilitates others to realise their creative potential. She empowers women daily, and she doesn’t even realise she is doing it. She is committed to her family and manages her brother’s artistic estate and legacy in this world. She is selfless and powerful and generous and I am extremely proud to call her my mother.
Most recently, she has watched me go through the breakdown of my relationship. She has watched me navigate a wholly unexpected situation in which I am sure she had a lot of opinions. She has given me the space and the dignity to make my own decisions, without voicing her opinion or trying to influence my behaviour. She has treated me as an adult and has shown how she respects and values me as a person. She has held me whilst I have cried, she has (on the whole) not commented on my ability to only eat veggie sausage brioche rolls for about eight weeks, she has given space to my irritability and not risen to my bad moods or short temper. She has let me alone whilst I have kept my mind busy and she has not commented on how much time I spend out the house, disrupting not only my, but her routine.
She is insatiable in her support of me, and she lets me know it. She tells me how proud she is and she tells me how well I am doing and she points out all the ways as to why, instead of them just being generic statements. She reinforces my validity and my right to this world regularly and she encourages me to be fearless, to be brave and to make the most out of my life in ways that don’t feel scary, just right.
She is a constant, in a life full of change, and I think that is what motherhood means to me. A bond, forged so distinctly, so uniquely, so strangely and so miraculously that it holds permanence. The rope can become longer and it can shrink but it is always there. It is always something you can rely on to lead you back to somewhere safe, somewhere constant, somewhere whole.
SAFFRON RAIN 