What we are made of

In response to a passage from The Iceberg, by Marion Coutts

We are made of interesting and dull matter, of atoms that become something, cells that become something, we are made of our choices, our intellect, our grasp of reality, our self renewal. We are made of sticky things, unheard of things, preposterous things, living things, dying things, things that are thrown into the fire, things that survive a lifetime. We are made of Jealousy and rage, and irritation and obstinacy and perseverance and passivity and calm and matriarchal influences. We are made to never comprehend, to seek, to whine, to beg, to blister, to repeat our inner worlds into our outer existence like an incessant shedding. We are made of loss, regret, anxiety, fear, foreboding, isolation and made to never fully rest, made to rest for only the time our circumstances allow, We are made of stuff that makes change, that changes it's environment, alters the sky and the seas and the dirt and the number of species and the quality of life. We are made to take away and bestow again in small measure. We are made to desire, to punish, to fall about laughing, to embrace, to chastise, to forget, to remember. We are made of interesting and dull things, empty and full things, we are made of all things. We have the means to fly, to swim, to soar, to battle, to be tender, to run around in circles, to stay perfectly still, to mesmerize, to bore, to destroy, to construct, to own, to rule, to terrorize, to pass out.

I should be thinking about my father and the throat tumour that finally killed him. But that image has been wiped away, temporarily. Replaced by memories of my pregnancies, reflections on what motherhood brought to me.

As the daughter of an alcoholic father and a depressed and repressed mother, I was never a good candidate for parenthood. That was the fact I believed in. I was damaged. I didn't believe in myself and I didn't believe in relationships. But here I am today, married 13 years, two children, a step daughter and a dog. My husband told me when we met that all I needed was to be loved. I don't know how he knew, and it sounds corney now, but it was the truth. It IS the truth. He loved me and I discovered that I was good enough, that relationships can be built ignoring the blueprint our parents pass on to us.

My family shows me every day what I am made of, and I am proud of it. I can still look at myself and find the cracks, the chips, the damage, but I am proud of what I can give, of the love my children have for me. It is a hard concept to accept sometimes, because I never liked my parents very much, and things might change, of course. But I look at the reasons why the gaping hole between my mother and I keeps growing, and I can't see that happening between me and my children. I am not my mother, and my children are not me. Well, perhaps they are what I would have been had my parents loved each other, had my mother been courageous enough to leave and raise us on her own...

What am I made of? I am a mutation, apparently. Something gone wrong. Yes, I would have loved that affirmation years ago. Today, I can ignore it.

Oh! I feel scared to touch this, to even lay a light finger on the idea of the/a fabric of myself. I see myself as so sheer, so fragile, I hardly dare believe there is any substance to me. If I breathe, will this pulsing shatter the tentativeness that enshrouds me so fully, so completely, that I feel it entails me? It is in breathing I learn that I am more robust. I do not crack up and disintegrate, in the way I fear every single time. Sometimes the breath just comes and goes, no damage done, tentative existence intact. It all sounds so precarious, a precarious hold on this precious elusive thing called life. Yet now I think of moss and earthiness, the tenacity and resilience of the shallow rooted growth that is so pleasurable to touch, with its soft tight fronds, so eager to spread and cushion the pounding echoes of concrete. I love the moss. The little bundle of green and brown, the compactness of it, the integrity. It is what it is and it is good. That sounds like a religious pronouncement! Move away from that. The earthiness, the physicality, what are we made of. He’s made of strong stuff, stern stuff, tough stuff…Odd. The muscle and sinew, the bone of us. Now I feel a clench inside, remembering ripping open my left arm on a tree branch as a child, seeing inside to the munch of weeping red flesh. So real and unreal. I couldn’t bear to look. Too painful to see this is what I was made of. Not just the sense of feeling wounded, vulnerable, but a repulsion at the very sight of the internal mess of me. The two go together for me, the sense of wounded-ness and of feeling an internal mess. Where have my attempts at creative writing gone, the sense of gestating and shaping something? It all feels like a sore within weeping onto the page, in all its/my unsightly gore, the ooze and slop of me.