On Not Becoming My Mother

 Meditating on gratitude for my mother requires imagination. 

My circumstances are somewhat unusual, in that my mother didn’t have me until she was in her early forties so that we are divided by not one, but two generations. I marvel at the fact that when my mother was conceived more than eighty years ago, so was the egg cell that was to go on to create me.

Over eighty years ago! It’s a humbling thought that almost a century ago a microscopic scrap of me was actually on this planet. It travelled to India and back, and then apart from an occasional jaunt to Brean Downs or Wales, remained in the West Midlands. And there, courtesy of my father, that oocyte which had matured into an ovum was fertilised and I was born in 1971, two decades after my siblings. It was the year of decimalisation, but I remember in our house there was still talk of bob (shillings) and thruppence (three old pennies) well into the late seventies.

I also grew up knowing a great deal more about World War II, and was more familiar with Music Hall than the Top 40.  There was nothing in our house so modern as central heating or double-glazing. And we were allowed a bath a week. Two inches deep, because the water heater was only allowed on for 25 minutes.  

“You don’t know you’re born’ was a phrase I became familiar with. But, though I inferred its meaning, it’s a peculiar phrase that doesn’t bear superficial scrutiny. Yet to my delight a fabulous internet pedant has managed to glean from its earliest usage that it equates to the Biblical admonition of being blithely unaware of being born into sin and woe (you ungrateful wretch).  That totally makes sense, as it seemed that the luxury of not being on wartime rations and hoping that Christmas might bring more than sixpence and a tangerine was mightily resented.

This is, I would like to emphasise, but the amusing froth on the bitter cappuccino of my mother’s campaign of petty tyranny over her family. A regime that has left her offspring reeling from various forms and degrees of trauma that we manage to survive and live with in our own ways.

Decades on, I am, more or less, the age that my mother was in my earliest memories, and my physical resemblance to these memories is sometimes hard to stomach. I own a very beautiful pair of spectacles, which I think some twisted subconscious whim bamboozled me into buying.  One day at work, when I was wearing them, I unexpectedly caught my reflection in a mirror and was gripped by fear that I was under the gaze of Mother. I haven’t been able to wear them since.

If becoming my mother isn’t enough food for thought, having a teenaged daughter creates the effect of being sandwiched between two identities. I watch my own body coming to resemble that of my mother’s, while I see my daughter’s growing to resemble the body I once had. Naturally both experiences prompt me to contemplate my own vanity and reflect on my mother’s intense jealousy. She was consumed by jealousy – of her few friends; her siblings; her children. Perhaps somewhere in her present pitiable derangement she still is. It must be a truly horrible place to be.

We are such visual creatures, it’s hard to tear our responses away from what we see, or think we see, with our own eyes. But, despite the evidence in the mirror, I only briefly have to compare my own attitude to my children with my mother’s to see there is not the slightest resemblance. My mind boggles at the things my mother felt impelled to tell me on a daily basis, which wouldn’t even cross my mind, let alone my lips.

With the passing of my mother's only remaining sister, a loving, hugely generous and kindly woman, I am reminded again of what an anomaly my own mother is. And finally, I don't have to pretend: the taboo is beginning to wear thin, and tales of her unbecoming spite and mischief are being told. Her kids weren't special, she bullied and abused her younger siblings in much the same way. 

The last time I saw my mother, her Alztheimers was advanced enough for her not to recognise me. When I say this, most people assume it's a premise to an expression of grief, but that's not the case. It was the first time for as far as can remember that she treated me with politeness and spoke to me without malice - simply because she saw me not as her daughter but 'as the nice lady with the little boy'. 

It was liberation. Liberation from a burden I'd carried all my life. Without a barrage of snide remarks, criticisms and open insults, this was a woman I could finally begin to forgive, to regard as an extremely flawed and a very sick human being who has sabotaged a good life into one of spite and sorrow, and now exists in the netherworld of senility. 

The fifth decade of my life has been focussed on facing my fears. But I am fearful of seeing my mother again. I don't want to lose the sense of closure, to risk re-opening the wounds that are beginning to heal. So I can only wish her freedom from suffering, as I wish to be free from my own.

Seasonal, Defective and Disordered

As the days draw in and the sky seems to hang perpetually dull and opaque, the glowering shadow of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) begins to flicker in my peripheral vision.

The falling leaves, the failing light, all signs that the death throes of another year are upon us, needling an incipient anxiety that life is slipping past too quickly. But this year, at least, I have discovered a means of lifting (if only momentarily) the veil of this the gloom-laden smog. I turn to meditation.

Its aim is not an empty mind or a state of utter detachment (or at least, not for rookies like me) and, only occasionally, I am fortunate to conjure bliss from this practice. It’s not a quick fix, or a distraction. It is rather more the means to allow my mind to fix my mind.

I only know one person who claims to find it easy. For most, there are always barriers, either to doing it at all, or to doing it satisfactorily. These obstacles can be external – the pleasant distractions of losing yourself to an evening of TV, or reading a story, doing a puzzle or playing a game; or internal – the ever-churning thoughts, plans and worries that plow through our minds like hurricanes.

In Triratna Buddhism, the two primary meditation practises are mindfulness of breathing and metta bhavana (cultivation of loving kindness).  The first, simply by the nature of our biological need to breathe, is readily accessible and can be key to learning how to pay attention to the state we are in.  Yet, the onslaught of life can be so immense, our detachment from our essential self so great, that the simple question, “How are you?” seems almost impossible to interpret, let alone answer.

But, once you are able to begin resisting the force of your storming brain, or the drip-drip of anxiety, to recognise just when and how far you are being pushed from the pathway of contemplating the in-and-out of your breath, then you can begin to regard a thought as just that – a thought- and not any more real or compelling than the process of gas exchange within your body. Let the thought go on its way, and bring yourself back to the breath.

But how does someone, surrounded by demanding humans, dazzled by dozens of competing obligations, find the opportunity to meditate?

Sara Burns, in her wonderfully down-to-earth and honest book, A Path for Parents (What Buddhism Can Offer), describes how she became mindful of the briefest moments when she could centre herself with a mini-meditation. She writes: “ …try it while watching your children play, or anywhere you have a few spare minutes not talking to someone else…” Easier said than done, you might argue, but it’s a far more realistic goal than meditating for hours on end in an incense scented prayer room, as nice as that would be!

An elderly lady, who attends the same meditation meetings as I do, claims she could never manage meditation when she was around her children. Eventually she decided that she would schedule particular times in her week to ensure she kept it up. Like playing an instrument, the longer you leave it, the more difficult it is to re-engage with the practice.  

Of course, when you begin to still your mind, things begin to float to the surface. They are not always pleasant. Sadly, some people who have suffered loss or tragedy and would benefit most from the chance to heal themselves, find the clarity it brings hard to bear. It’s easier to leave those unwelcome emotions to sink back into the mud, particularly in a world where we are expected to ‘get on with it’. Others can lose patience with our need to deal with our pain – they are probably afraid of facing their own long buried suffering – but we can be hurried through bereavement or topped up with drugs for depression, neglecting the long healing journey we really need to take. But the need to be productive rather than contemplative is the ethos which keeps the behemoth of our global economy lumbering along like a Frankenstein’s monster. 

Halloween is barely over, but snow-flake festooned seasonal food is on the shelves, the TV spews out advertisements of all the things we should buy to attain a perfect Christmas, and city streets begin to heave with stressed-out shoppers with too much to do. I can feel my chest tighten at the thought of what’s to come, the heightened expectations, the diminishing bank balance, the seductive shiny things, the compelling myths of Happy Christmas that blind me to the grasping, hungry beast that I continue to sustain at my own cost.

And … breathe …