Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 4, Number 1. May 2021. ISSN: 2581-7094
Motherhood
--- Anna Patalona
A Big Question
“At least a kid is an answer to the Big
Question…
“Yet if there’s no reason to live without a
child, how could there be one with one? To answer one life with a successive
life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the
displacement amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your
children’s answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to
distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.”
Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
(2003)
Nuclear Family: a family group that
consists only of parents and children.
I guess I missed that Big
Question. Other big questions loomed over my head at a time when most young
women contemplated, either by choice or unplanned circumstance, the value of
offspring in their lives.My big question early on was – how do I find my voice,
define my thoughts and feelingsas an artist? I can’t say that is was really a
conscious thought but rather a compulsion to create something meaningful and
tangible outside of my own head that would express that which seemed always
fleeting, eluding concrete definition, maybe suggesting another state of being.
I wasn’t sure of any of that. But I was sure that I would spend the greater
part of my life on that journey and that nothing would deter from this mission.
I was raised with one foot in one culture
(American) and the one foot in another (Italian). It’s part of the deal when
raised as a child of immigrants. Which values do I embrace, reject, and
ultimately uphold? Funny thing is, motherhood was never really spoken about as
a “goal.” Perhaps my own mother, who many perceived as an excellent role model
for a loving but tough mom, hoped that I would learn the value of being a
mother by absorbing her actions. “Do as I do, not as I say.”The fact is that
both of my parents were people of action. What they did mattered
more than what theysaid.
What was demonstrated was the idea that family
and education mattered the most. We had a close-knit, extended family in which
elders, grandparents, god parents, aunts, uncles were an integral part of
childrearing...not just out of practical necessity but also because they were
valued for the knowledge they passed down, that they were truly our first
teachers. The values that were conveyed often conflicted with (at the time) an
American idea of a nuclear family. My brothers and I, as young people, were at
least given the chance to be exposed to that and eventually learn about the
differences between the family-of-origin values and those of the American culture
we were being raised in. One’s scope and world view automatically broadens when
presented with more than one set of values.
So, while I saw both my mother and grandmother,
and many aunts in my family marry and have children, I never really felt the expectation
of me popping bodies out of my own. When will you settle down and have
kids of your own? When will I be a grandparent? Don’t you want children? I
never really heard any of this. Kind of strange coming from what appeared to be
a very traditional Italian family.
What I did see was a group of very independent
women who, while they made choices to have children, didn’t seem to portray it
as being a necessity to a happy life. They all seemed to know who they were
apart from being mothers. Not to say that their role as
mothers did not have a significant part of shaping who they were as people. Of
course, it did. But at their core, they had very strong senses of themselves. I
recognized this more as I got older but fairly early on, I think I instinctively
knew that my own mother would have been just fine without children. I often
wondered what she could have made of her life without the job of raising my
siblings and me. Her independence, brilliance and drive were pretty apparent.
Had she been born in a different time with more opportunities, I am certain
that motherhood would not have been at the top of her list of potential
ambitions. While I never really knew what she herself might have dreamed of, I
suspect that she could have been a compelling politician or public advocate of
some kind, given her penchant for helping people and ferreting out solutions to
problems.
It’s an odd thing to come from a family
where the idea of family was so important but in which the women
seemed to oppose the importance of having children to live a fulfilled life. I
see now that their idea of family was much greater than the notion of having a
nuclear family existing in its own small bubble. Family meant that extended
family was just as important as the nuclear family. Grandparents, aunts and
uncles, cousins, all had substantial roles in childrearing and often being
disciplined by an extended family member meant just as much as being swatted on
the butt by my mom. Extended family were often included in major and minor
events in the younger peoples’ lives. While none of my female relatives
attempted to become surrogate mothers, I knew that I could (and did) turn to
them for support….even if it came with a dose of reality that sometimes I
didn’t like hearing. My own mother made sure I understood that everyone in the
family was important in their various roles and that perhaps there was
something to learn from them as well. They all became my “mothers” in some way
or another….and my mom was just fine with that. Another testament to her
progressive thinking way ahead of her time.
Having said this, I think that this may be the
central reason as to why I was never really expected or compelled to assume the
role of a traditional mother. If I chose to not bear children, my role as a
valued female member within my family as a whole would be sustained.
This is where the big hiccup occurs. In all of
their wisdom and foresight, my female ancestors could not have imagined that
their cherished notion of family and perhaps even their own view of motherhood
would be sucked in by the narrowness and exclusivity of the nuclear, American
family. And so it has become.
The strangest thing about this is that it has
occurred at a time when many forms of motherhood outside of traditional role
models have become accepted, even celebrated. Same-sex mothers, stay at home mom-dads,
surrogate mothers in all shapes and sizes, have become a trend. The trend. It’s
cool.
Within what’s left of my own family, it has
become an ironic joke. That most of the values attributed as being important,
including motherhood within a collective family-tribe, have been wholly
rejected (apart from superficial connections to lame, Italian-American,
“guido”—pomade-slicked hair, gold-chain draped, steroid-driven masculinity,
track-suit attired—renditions of such things as food. If you eat large quantities
of pasta with your slab of fried-chicken meat encrusted with
melted cheese and doused with tomato sauce, you’re Italian. Right…)
and been replaced by a self-imposed, sheltered nuclear bubble protected by
warning signs placed on sequestered, neatly trimmed homes restricting
solicitation of almost all manner of spontaneous, human interaction. Unless it
is convenient. The message is clear. In an attempt to redefine family and the
role of motherhood, family-of-origin-based valuesare rejected.
Fear can be a powerful motivator as a basis for
all sorts of decisions. I must say that in my own rejection of traditional
motherhood, I feared losing my independence. This became the basis for my
decision. However, a couple of times life made the choice for me when I found
myself in unplanned situations, stumbling into the potential creation of
another being. When things aren’t meant to be, nature has a funny way of
telling your body, no. As a result, this underscored my sense that motherhood
and raising children was not in the cards for me. At a certain point, I was
actually thankful that I wasn’t going to be unconsciously placing any
unresolved conflicts upon my offspring. Understanding the unresolved was and is
the job of my art. That became clear very early on. I somehow knew that to have
children meant that I had to know for sure that I wasn’t trying to fill an
emotional void or that I had an ego-driven need to have a mini-me running
around in the world. Given that I spent a great deal of time reflecting back in
the days of my childbearing years, I couldn’t be certain that either one of
these conditions wouldn’t be true. Therefore, I refrained…or
life did it for me. I was very clear that I wasn’t trying to run from or
towards something using another human being, a child no less, as an aide in my
quest. I had to define who I was on my own. The time it took to do that as a
younger person extended beyond the possibility of being a mother with kids of
my own. And I was ok with that.
I suppose then one can be a mother without kids
of their own and for the purpose of this essay, I believe I have touched upon
some options to traditional motherhood given my upbringing and experiences.
Most significantly, I have been a teacher for as many years as it takes to
become a mother and grandmother. My studentsare adult ones and they have
required, in some sense, a kind of nurturing that mothers provide.
Encouragement, demonstration of skills and helping with the implementation of
those skills, understanding and supporting their independent ideas and visions.
Then letting them go with the hope that they will remember what I gave them and
pass it along in a positive way to the world. The difference here of course is
that the students want to learn and be nurtured. Such is not always the case
with kids who don’t ask to be put here by their parents.
As I near a conclusion on this topic, I go back
with some disagreement to Lionel Shriver’s thought to the “Big Question” from
her novel, We Need To talk About Kevin. While I agree that
parents may unconsciously be fettering their children with their own
aimlessness due to a lack of clarity of who they are and why they are producing
offspring, I think that children can provide a mirror to oneself and come into
our lives to teach us something. This can be a positive result to procreation.
I’m guessing that most parents would give
standard answers as to why they want to procreate – to create a family of their
own, to make the world better by somehow adding to the population
but-their-kids-will-make-a-difference, that children are borne out of love --
that they want to leave something of themselves behind, and so
on. It is only with an open mind, heart, and real courage that
extends beyond the usual challenges of having children and being an adequate
parent that a mother, or father, can look at their children and understand that
greater lessons are about to be presented to them...pretty much before the
child even sees the light of day.
We are all connected by genetics at the very
least. But we are alone in how we learn what life needs to teach us. Motherhood
in its various forms can be a great teacher and a source of comfort along
the way. But, so too, may the childless life be both rich and rewarding.