56. Queendom

Where have the mothers been?

Since I was able to delineate myself - to delineate in the sense of indicating a position, the “where-I-am-at-a-specific-time” - only when the hormones of motherhood kicked in (Where was I? Next to my child), it was the care I could provide that put a name on who I was.

I had become maman. A denomination that made sense and to which wholesomely I could answer to. Where on Earth I stood.

The beauty of that name, its merit, rests with its definition: An organization from which younger ones derive, as in ‘our mother house.’ To differentiate from 'our mother’s house,’ a possessive, the place where the children live, are tolerated, but still someone else’s home.

Also, an organization, not so much a person. A composite of functions, a plurality of roles, heterogeneity. The self divided to better accomplish a multitude of activities, latticework, a wide matrix of tiny seconds filled with enterprising ventures and risks.

Child care, thus, was the phenomenon by which I grew, in need of archetypical dialogue. Biological motherhood, an authenticated starting-point for nursery rhymes and versified poetry chronicling attachment, but without its disorders. Emphatic relationships responding to sensitivity across a lifespan. Nourishment. In departure from personal mythic traditions. The mammal part of me ready for its first private appearance. A tale and a pantomime to enrapture all offspring. Socio-emotional development thriving at the sound of whispered jingles, bedtime stories offering guidance and much needed metaphors. Experience stemming more from the fairy tale genre than from actual life skills. The biological system underlying emotional availability interacting with the infant’s gestures as windows of opportunities for the transit of miscellaneous information due to see surmises confirmed.

I was maman, which is unfortunately also a word for reproductive technologies, with prime connotations and a generic figure. A word often flavored with labor-intensive testimonials, outright manipulations and unresolved evolutionary conflicts. Internal chronology to support diapering ideology. Recounting the cycles of pedagogy, operationalization of pseudoscientific parenting. Inherently hostile educational views spewing the endless list of unrealistic obligations borne by the child.

So I was a maman, and to introduce myself, I had to shed the arrogance of knowledge. Converting into a mother without empirical support. Switching from punitive consequences to natural ones, relying on ditties, not policy statements, to secure attachment. Just-in-time production and a presence, no co-sponsor, as a way to avoid coercion. Nurturing for the sake of children, never to achieve one’s potential. Somehow incapable of solving riddles, but not ignoring the questions. An innovative approach to an epistemology capable of engendering both epic and archaic vocabulary. Amending mistakes not to become a continuity error. In the water of the fountain, some of the links in the chain of disasters rust and break.

Maman, letters swarming to form an old word with an untried meaning. Polymorphism beyond genetic traits. No valid measures to label parental models. Only inadvertent unconscious sins plotting an arc that shifts directions, finally moving toward the absence of self-prophetic abilities. Outwitting doctrines. Gifted with instinctive and unembellished references.

But where have the mothers been?

In a world of kinship, where all blood relationships are shown with subtitles, a person’s maternity gets challenged because it misconstrues role-playing games, a spoof after some hesitation renaming itself, and a landmark for immersion and perpetual gestation. A shadowy figure devoid of boundaries and woven from a compilation of hypnotized legal relations. Demonstrations of fine and experienced motherhood, profusion of melodramas nominated for awards, while despair is premiered underground.

Ploughed fields are seriously wounded. No restored queendoms.

Mothers have often been nowhere to be seen.

Laolao