Another Mother Letter
Has anyone else noticed the trend amongst mothers to write blog letters to their tender children for posterity? I too have had the urge to engage in letter writing to my future mature son, what mother doesn't get emotional about her child's ever changing growing mind and body after several high quality beers? Yet, I have to admit something, these letters written by mothers to their children (usually girls, as if that's significant) make me super uncomfortable...kind of like I suddenly have a bunch of microscopic parasites eating at the under-layers of my skin.Public displays of mush and love tend to make me excessively uncomfortable. It's weird to me how Heather Armstrong can be the funniest writer I've ever read on absolutely every subject and she's so very cuttingly witty until she writes letters to her daughter*. I feel like mothers, when writing these letters, are soothing themselves through all the changes their children are going through; it isn't for their children they write these letters but to themselves. The letters are a little bit like eulogies which kind of creeps me out.
If my mother had written letters to me when I was a baby, and then as I was growing up, what would I want to hear her say? Or talk about? What kind of tone would reach me as an adult and make me feel connected? What kind of questions would I want answered, what kind of events in my small life would I want her to memorialize? One thing's for sure, if she had written such sonnets of love to my remembrance I would feel strange, as though I had lived my life under a microscope and then begun to die as I matured.
I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't appreciate so many details of my early life to be committed to paper because how could I ever become who I need to become with such intense scrutiny of my whole growing up process? It would make me feel a little violated to be able to read about absolutely everything I ever said, every difficulty I had, every time I was cute (probably not often in my case), and everything I ever thought right there in print. Print my mother brought to life. It's done with love, but it's like writing a diary for someone else of intimate details. I have a hard enough time looking back at my own childish diary scrawls because looking back like that depresses me.
Love is much more evident in action than in words. I think I would be much more interested in finding letters from my mother that speak of details not evident to my young eyes, like what my mother was thinking about while we made those strange bean paintings in the commune. These aren't letters she could write now because now she sees the distant past with a lot of time filters.
Girls, in general, tend to exhibit more interest in the details of their early years than boys. Girls TEND to be more sentimental about the passing of time and life changes, so what I want to know is: what will Max want to hear? When he is a bachelor living out his days in a penthouse with big breasted girl bunnies for companions**, what will he look back on in his childhood and wonder about? What will he try to remember? Will he yearn for written proof that I loved him more than anyone else on earth? Will he not be sure about that?
I think all mothers (besides the Yates woman) have these emotional letters constantly percolating in their heads and hearts. I think most mothers at some point become overwhelmed by the love they feel for their children and need to spill some of the overflow. I have been known to write hundreds of such letters to friends, Max, Philip, favorite authors, and my childhood bully late in the night after many beers in an effort to exorcise the emotions I find burning into the dark. I have felt the need to move others with these deep and important feelings.
But then I wake up in the morning and re-read what I've written and always feel that I have written something grasping and childish in it's simplistic efforts to touch others where I have been touched (other than in my head I mean). There's nothing wrong with being sentimental and trying to share that. Except that I can't personally do it and feel good about myself afterwards. And I have to look away when I see other people being so naked too.
So here's what I want to say to Max today in a letter to keep always:
Dear Kid,
For one and a half weeks I have been relishing the words you spoke to me as you played Legos in my studio while I removed staples from the floor- "Mom, you wanna see a remarkable crash?". I love it when you pull out the big words son.
Love,
Mom
*Actually some of her letters to Leta aren't so sentimental and sometimes they are pretty funny. But sometimes I can't finish reading them.
**I added the bunny companions bit because it's the obvious accoutrement to lifelong bachelorhood which Max claims he wants-but he doesn't know anything about big breasted playmates. I promise.
Note: I do hope it's clear that I don't view mothers being sentimental as something bad or wrong or embarrassing, this post is more about examining my own strange feelings these letters evoke for me and my own uneasiness with some of life's most natural expressions of love. Remember: I have some screws loose.
