She has the luxury of grandparenting.
At one remove, able to see what I could be doing better. Able to give the advice I’ve tried to impart over years, in those five minutes making a cup of tea, not looking at the angsty one. And if she does catch the hateful look, it isn’t for her, so she can ignore it and not be wounded or grounded or floored or broken by it.
She makes my mistakes look easy.
She makes my griefs seem unnecessary.
It’s obvious to her, looking on from beyond, from the safety of the distance of years, what I should have done.
Behind her barricade of experiences, shared and unshared, her bare heart could be bleeding and broken, but she will not let me know. Won’t let me into her fortress of years. She, by her silence, says I must build my own. I cannot share her wisdom. I must form my own.
Just as pregnancy cannot be shared in another’s body, so motherhood, she insinuates, cannot be shared in this other’s life.
She leaves me to stumble on blindly, accusing me with a foreign tongue of not loving her son right. Of not raising her grandchildren how she wanted.
She has not seen: this man – her son – he, as man, not boy, is my husband. These children – her grandchildren – they, as children, simple, not grand, are my children. They have made me a mother. They have made her Grand.
The hierarchy of titles does not recognise me as the prime source of their being.
He has made her a mother. But I have made him a husband, as he has made me woman, wife, mother to these, who will in turn make others grander than their beginnings.
One day, my children’s children will make me Grand.
But I pray I will not crush their mothers.
Author
thinkspeakrun@gmail.com