Origami, Caught, Familiar Voices

A couple of days before Mother's day, I drove by a church's changeable letter sign ( there must be a better name for these, but it's what I found when I tried to look it up) that read: "A mother is the heart of her family." Were it not for a conversation I'd had with my mother just the day before, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about the sign and been content to let it pass as yet another warm platitude. Instead, the saying has become a definitive part of how I think about my mother, and motherhood in general.

 

There's something untethered and insubstantial in the way that the men in my family move through the world. My father especially is admired for his carefree and easygoing nature, but what people don't see is how all the worries which never seem to stick to him fall on my mother's shoulders. In me, the tendency manifests itself as chronic self-neglect, and there too my mother has always fought to keep me in check. All of the anxiety which we are either unwilling to bear or sometimes even totally oblivious of, my mother gathers for herself. What we refuse to feel, she feels for us, and not only feels, but processes as well, all so that we might have the freedom to live less encumbered.

Done