My mother died seven years ago this month, which is also the month I was born. I wrote a short story, which reads like a prose poem, a few years ago about the experience, caring for her during those last months. I thought I would reblog it here in memory of her. We had a difficult relationship at times, but it was buoyed by the deep love and commitment we had for each other. She is dearly missed.
Here’s how the story begins. You can read the rest of it at the link below.
I She streaks past me naked in the dark hall. Light from the bathroom flashes upon her face, her thin shoulders, her sharp knees. Her head turns toward me, her dark eyes angry stabs. As if daring me to see her, stop her, help her. Or demanding I don’t.
I struggle up from the cot where I’ve been sleeping. Through the open doorway, she’s a slice of bright light, slumped on the toilet, the white tiles gleaming behind her.
Some favorite pairings in music and art to start your weekend off. I fell in love with this hauntingly sad-sweet piece by Shigeru Umebayashi and paired it with some of my favorite romantic images on my “Mothers and Other Lovers” Pinterest page. Enjoy.
Antonio Canova – Psyche Revived by Cupid’s kiss
Edvard Munch “Kiss by the Window”
A Knight’s Kiss b Anne Anderson
Auguste Rodin
Tristan and Isolde by Mac Fisman
Lovers by William Powell Firth
By Erhard Loblein
Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Frederick Burton
Marc Chagall
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt
The Fisherman and the Siren by Frederic Leighton
Adam and Eve from Milton’s Paradise Lost
Gustaf Tenggren illustration for Grimm’s Fairy Tale
I was surprised by how much I love painting abstracts. Just playing with color, design, textures is so freeing and creative. There’s no worry involved, no trying to make the work look like something in particular, or any hesitation to try something new for fear I’ll “ruin” it.
Yet it’s not like I begin with no thought in mind. I have a sense of what I want to create or capture. It’s not like I’m just throwing down color willy-nilly, although I suppose there would be nothing wrong with doing that either. But I like the creative process of laying down lines, swirls, design and adding paint to create a sense of balance, interest, complication, and completion. Each layer or choice adds something distinct and interesting to the whole.
In this first piece I started with that primal swirl in white oil pastel, then added the three slanted lines at the top in gold oil pastel. After that I dropped in various hues of blue, wet-on-wet so they could mix and mingle, and let it dry. When dry I added the dark blue dripping at the top, coaxing the drips around the oil pastel. I added the dark gold at the bottom and in various places for interest and balance, then let it dry again. In the last pass I toned down the gold pastel with blue pastel, added more “sparkles” and swirls of white and gold pastel, then more blue pastel toward the center of the major swirl to help the white pop.
It was all a careful, studied consideration, born of intuition and gut-feel, to reach the balance and interest I was looking for. My love of blue and gold in combination was given full rein to play with each other, and I noticed how my favorite doodles when I’m lost in thought made their way into the painting as well.
In the end, this piece reminds me of the night sky, with its swirling galaxies, shooting stars, and so on. Although intentionally, that wasn’t what I had started out to create, I think my love for the night sky, that mystery and romance, was expressed here subconsciously.
I think that’s what I love about the making of abstract art, the little I’ve done so far, surprising myself with what gets pulled up subconsciously from some deeper inner reservoir. It’s what I’ve always loved about writing too, surprising myself with what comes out on paper.
The next piece I created was totally different in style and by intention. I wanted to experiment with lifting out a figure from layers of paint, which I did on the right. I wanted bright primal colors. After the deep blue and red on the right I laid down a brilliant yellow and then a dark gold below. Then I added the marks at the top and bottom left purely for what I thought would be “interesting” and enough to balance with the dark red and blue on the other side without taking away too much attention from that vague ghostly figure, which I saw as being the main focus.
When I reached what appeared to be an interesting balance, I stopped. “Man in Motion” came to me unbidden when I looked at the figure, so I suppose I will name it that, although what that means, if anything, I do not know.
This last piece was inspired by my love of scarlet and gold “in conversation.” I decided to split the painting into two unequal wholes. I started with swirls of gold and red oil pastel across the whole sheet. Then I used masking tape to divide the two sides and began splashing on two or three variations of red, one on top of the other, wet on wet. I did the same with yellow and gold on the other side. Then I used crushed cellophane to add pattern and texture to both sides. Finally I added some drips of blue on the red, and drips of dark gold and red on the yellow side.
But I wasn’t quite satisfied.
So I did something dangerous and daring. I added a strip of dark blue across the middle of the yellow side. It was awful! I thought I had ruined it and began trying to sponge it away, then I washed and scrubbed it, but a green stain remained. So I added more yellow on top of it and added more swirls of gold oil pastel. And I kept playing and experimenting until finally I was satisfied, and decided I liked this better than what I had before after all.
This is what I ended up with. For some reason the colors seem brighter in the previous photo than in this one, but in actuality, this is as rich and luminous as the one above. However, this final version seems more interesting and “complete” to me than the first, which seemed to lack “something,” a depth, perhaps, or focus, or darker interest.
Anyway, I enjoyed this whole process so much, I know I’ll be painting more abstracts.
Knowing little about abstract art I did some research online and found this essay on the Metropolitan Art Museum website. It was fascinating how many abstract artists felt they were tapping into some “universal inner sources” when they painted, and how they felt their works “stood as reflections of their individual psyches.” I also like how “these artists valued spontaneity and improvisation, and accorded the highest importance to process.”
“For Abstract Expressionists, the authenticity or value of a work lay in its directness and immediacy of expression. A painting is meant to be a revelation of the artist’s authentic identity.”
I suppose that’s why someone like me who is playing with art and doing it purely for my own pleasure and interest would be drawn toward the abstract. And no doubt it is why the creation of art itself can be such a healing activity.
The essay ends with this interesting bit about the “expressive potential of color,” and the artist’s quest for the sublime.
Mature Abstract Expressionism: Color Field
Another path lay in the expressive potential of color. Rothko, Newman, and Still, for instance, created art based on simplified, large-format, color-dominated fields. The impulse was, in general, reflective and cerebral, with pictorial means simplified in order to create a kind of elemental impact. Rothko and Newman, among others, spoke of a goal to achieve the “sublime” rather than the “beautiful,” harkening back to Edmund Burke in a drive for the grand, heroic vision in opposition to a calming or comforting effect. . . . For Rothko, his glowing, soft-edged rectangles of luminescent color should provoke in viewers a quasi-religious experience, even eliciting tears.
Certainly color and color combinations have always had a particular hold on me, even to the point of a “quasi-religious experience” that has led to a “tearing up.” It’s how I judge art in general, not so much for its beauty but for its ability to move me, whether toward the sublime or in some other deeply felt way. This is true for me both as a maker of art and a lover of art.
Love, I think, is the glue that holds it altogether.
I love this photo of the Zen sage D.T Suzuki. He was one of my first “gurus” if I, or he, believed in such things. His “Essays in Zen Buddhism” certainly was a huge influence in my life, as he was for so many, including Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, Carl Jung, Alan Watts, and John Cage.
So I was excited to find this photo and article about him on Maria Popova’s fascinating website Brainpickings. Many of the quotations she includes were ones I highlighted in my dog-eared copy so long ago. I highly recommend you reading her article on “How Zen Can Help You Cultivate Your Character.”
What I love about Suzuki’s approach to Zen is its emphasis on the psychological and the practical, and the turning away from the merely logical and rational, or verbal.
“The truth of Zen is the truth of life,” he writes, “and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.”
He goes on to explain:
“In the actual living of life there is no logic, for life is superior to logic. We imagine logic influences life, but in reality man is not a rational creature so much as we make him out; of course he reasons, but he does not act according to the result of his reasoning pure and simple. There is something stronger than ratiocination.”
“Zen is to be explained, if at all explained it should be, rather dynamically than statically. When I raise the hand thus, there is Zen. But when I assert that I have raised the hand, Zen is no more there.”
“Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going on, neither before nor after.”
We must see directly into the thing in itself as itself, into the “suchness” of life: “responding to a call, listening to a murmuring stream, or to a singing bird, or any of our most ordinary everyday assertions of life.”
To do this: “We must first of all acquire a new point of view of looking at things, which is altogether beyond our ordinary sphere of consciousness.”
When we do: “The old world of the sense has vanished, and something entirely new has come to take its place. We seem to be in the same objective surrounds, but subjectively we are rejuvenated, we are born again.”
Yet this new “sphere of consciousness” must be grounded in our practical, ordinary lives.
“Psychologically there is a most intimate and profound relationship between a practical turn of mind and a certain type of mysticism . . . If mysticism is true its truth must be a practical one, verifying itself in every act of ours, and most decidedly, not a logical one.”
He goes on to quote the Zen poet Hokoji:
“How wondrously supernatural,
and how miraculous this!
I draw water, and I carry fuel.”
This too is what I love about Suzuki’s approach to Zen, his emphasis on work, and on work as love.
“For the soundness of ideas must be tested finally by their practical application. When they fail in this–that is, when they cannot be carried out in everyday life producing lasting harmony and satisfaction and giving real benefit to all concerned–to oneself as well as to others–no ideas can be said to be sound and practical.”
“The fact is that if there is any one thing that is most emphatically insisted upon by the Zen maters as the practical expression of their faith, it is serving others, doing work for others: not ostentatiously, indeed, but secretly without making others know of it. Says Eckhart [Christian mystic], ‘What a man takes in by contemplation he must pour out in love.’ Zen would say, ‘pour out in work,’ meaning by work the active and concrete realization of love.”
Throughout his essays he quotes generously from Zen masters and poets, and from Christian mystics and other Western thinkers and philosophers. Thus he weaves together common threads as well as pointing out differences between Zen and Western philosophies and spiritual practices.
Popova calls his essays “a moral toolkit for modern living, delivered through a grounding yet elevating perspective on secular spirituality.”
I would have to agree with that. Certainly I used it as a “toolkit” for my own own understanding of Zen and its application to ordinary life.
Suzuki writes:
“Life as it is lived suffices. It is only when the disquieting intellect steps in and tries to murder it that we stop to live and imagine ourselves to be short of or in something. Let the intellect alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream. If you are at all tempted to look into it, do so while letting it flow.
Zen . . . must be directly and personally experienced by each of us in his inner spirit. Just as two stainless mirrors reflect each other, the fact and our own spirits must stand facing each other with no intervening agents. When this is done we are able to seize upon the living, pulsating fact itself.
That is what I work to do:
To grasp the fact of life and its sufficeness with bare hands.
To “step barefoot into reality” as the poet puts it.
Although, too often this is forgotten in the busyness of things, the turmoil and petty pleasures that swirl around us all and steal our attention.
But I’m beginning to understand that even these upsets and petty pleasures have a place within the larger scheme of things, if only we would see them as such:
In celebration of April as the National Month of Poetry, I’ve been looking back at posts on poetry that I’ve written over the years, and thought that I’d share two “firsts” with you:
the first poet I blogged about back in September 2012, and
the first of my own poetry that I shared in July of that year, which, coincidentally, was turned into an exquisite piece of music by a classical composer.
I’ll save that one for next time and start with Dickman under the original title.
I stumbled across him by accident. One thing led to another and another, the way it often happens surfing the internet. And there it was, a video of Matthew Dickman reading at the San Francisco Zen Center.
And I was blown away. Yes, I actually was. The same way Emily Dickinson said poetry affected her—as if the top of her head had been removed—“blown away” I believe is the expression we’d use today.
Now, Dickman’s poetry isn’t Zen, or even spiritual. It’s earthy, sometimes crass and crude, lightly humorous. Hip, you might say, in the way the beat poets were hip, so clued into the “street life” of their age, with such insight and understanding, that they could be said to speak for that generation.
So I think is Dickman’s poetry, though since I’m not from that generation, and don’t normally speak that language, I may be wrong.
So please listen and tell me. Am I right? Does he capture something from today’s youth that expresses its particular angst and yearning , love and loss, in a way that both elevates and exemplifies it?
I’m trying to figure out just what captivates me in listening to him read his poetry. It’s so unpretentious and unassuming:
Like a scrap of paper blown down a dirty sidewalk that takes on a beauty of its own without meaning to.
Like that paper bag being blown around and around in the film “American Beauty.” Remember? It’s like that.
In this way, it may be Zen-like, after all. In that his blunt, sometimes unbeautiful images strike you as an unexpected blow, like that “thwack” from the Master’s stick on the student’s head, that makes you wake up and “see,” but you’re not sure yet what you’re seeing, only that this quick-silver clarity is already fading, while something solid and meaty seeped unawares into your bones and shored them up.
If you’ve felt this way before, you know what I mean.
If you haven’t, don’t stress, you will.
Listen to Dickman reading his poem “Slow Dance”, or read the poem “V” I’ve posted below the video. See if it happens to you. Tell me if it does or doesn’t do what I say. I really want to know. People either love his work or hate it, I’ve heard, so either way I’m open.
Celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King days before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the Unites States could not seem more incongruous, nor be more timely. And needed.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, he had begun to turn his attention away from the civil rights movement to what he considered to be an even more compelling problem: economic injustice.
“For we know now that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger?”
He had discovered that the major divisive force in America was not color, but class. The rich and powerful, whether black or white, shared the same interest in keeping the races segregated, exploiting the poor and powerless, and maintaining the status quo.
He believed the unequal distribution of wealth was tearing America apart and threatening to make it a two-class society. He wanted to help build the kind of America that would not tolerate poverty within its borders, that would not allow one class to exploit another, that would not allow the powerful to abuse the powerless.
He called for “a revolution in values” that placed “democratic principles and justice above privilege.” Fighting for this change would not be easy. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“We will be greatly misled if we feel that the problem will work itself out. Structures of evil do not crumble by passive waiting,” he warned. “The battering rams of justice” are needed.
Shortly before his death he began organizing for another march on Washington, this time for economic equality. He fought for an “economic bill of rights” that guaranteed full employment and a livable wage, affordable housing and a “massive public works programs (to build) decent housing, schools, hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation centers.”
“Freed from the smothering prison of poverty, people could chart their own path and fully realize their human potential.”
At King’s death, nearly 50 years ago, the minimum wage in today’s dollars would be $9.54. Now it is only $7.25. That’s a loss of nearly three dollars per hour for today’s workers.
The gap between the rich and the poor is far greater now than it was then. The two-class society King feared and warned us against is already here. And people in the mostly white rust belt who had been suffering steep economic decline because of jobs being shipped overseas, decided they had had enough. Decided that career politicians had failed them. Decided that what they needed was a “strong man” to save them.
Why do the hard work of organizing, of mobilizing workers to strike and march, of flooding into the offices of their congress to demand change, of creating white papers on policy-change and registering voters? Why do that when they had a demagogue who promised, “I will fix it, I will bring jobs back, I alone will do this.”
They trusted him to do hard work for them. A man who said the minimum wage was already too high. Who did not support tuition-free colleges. Who’s idea of stirring the economy was to give even more tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent. And whose “jobs bill” appears to be giving even more subsidies (corporate welfare) to big business to “fix” our broken infrastructure. It’s just another form of “trickle-down,” voodoo economics.
The few jobs Trump has saved so far by giving kickbacks to corporations to keep their factories in the US is a small pittance in comparison to the number of jobs President Obama saved in his stimulus packet and in the auto industry bail-out at the beginning of his term.
But so far these Trump supporters seem pleased. And well they should. What they want is THEIR jobs back. And they believe that Trump will keep trying to do that.
Unfortunately, Trump isn’t interested in economic equality across the board. He isn’t interested in tearing apart the political policies and economic structures that create and sustain a two-class society, that allows the rich to grow richer and the poor poorer as one class exploits another. Economic justice isn’t on his radar or even part of his vocabulary.
And for many Trump supporters that’s just fine.
But the rest of us, hopefully we are waking up. A divided America cannot stand. Economic just across the board is sorely needed, in all corners of our nation. In the rural outback and inner cities, the factories and fast food kitchens. It’s needed for home care workers and preschool teachers, for farm workers and grocery clerks, for all who work full-time jobs for half-time wages, for all who see good jobs disappear without the training programs to support those who lose them.
What we need, as King said, is “a revolution in values” that places “democratic principles and justice above privilege.”
We need an economic system based on love. That’s what transforms the heart and mind and motivates real lasting change.
King said: “Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against justice . . . It is the collusion of immoral power with powerless immorality that constitutes the major crisis of our times.”
That kind of love and economic equality lifts all boats, for, as King said, we are all “interrelated.”
“The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich. The betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one affects all indirectly.”
This is Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy to us, and his challenge: To end poverty and economic injustice by wedding power with love.
He writes:
“In the final analysis, love is not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual.
When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems.
Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”
In the age of Trump, this kind of love is needed more than ever.
“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.”
The single-most, salient symbol of Christmas, for me, is a shining star in the night sky.
It’s what wakened the shepherds and fell them to their knees, what mesmerized the Magi and led them across a wild desert with precious gifts in hand. It’s what shone above a humble dwelling, revealing a holy trinity–mother, father, child. It’s what revealed the Christ, a promise of hope, salvation, peace on earth, and goodwill toward all.
It’s what leads us each year away from our mundane, daily lives to a world full of wonder, magic, and mystery. It’s what drops us to our knees in recognition of the vastness and beauty of the universe, and our own humble and radiant place within it.
For me Christmas will forever be wrapped in the silence of a starry night, the background against which the beautiful pageantry and rituals and traditions of Christmas unfold.
All unite in igniting that sense of awe and wonder and delight, of humility and holiness:
The Christmas tree all aglow in the dark, pointing upward to the heavens.
The magical whimsy of that great gifter, Santa, driving his sleigh across a night full of stars.
The children tucked in their beds as their fondest wishes magically descend in the night to await the first light.
Whole streets full of houses ablaze in the night, inviting the gasps of wonder and delight in the young at heart.
Candles shining in a still, dark church as voices unite and rise in songs of joy and adoration.
All are mere reflections and whimsical mimicry of that first night of wonder so long ago. It’s what brought us, and still brings us, to our knees when we realize all that childlike wonder and delight, humility and awe, generosity and love and innocence, lies deeply embedded in each one of us.
It signifies a promise of hope, salvation, and wholeness. Of identity with out own Christ-like nature, our own unity with the divine.
We are that shining star in a dark night.
We are those humble shepherds and adoring Magi.
We are that infant cradled in the holy Trinity.
We are that promise of hope and salvation and holiness.
Christmas is the Christ, and a bright star in a dark night is what leads us to him, to our own humble rebirth full of awe and wonder: the recognition of the Christ in each of us.
May the peace and power and glory of the Christ be with you all this Christmas.
Walters, “The Adoration of the Shepherds”
From “Christmas throughout Christendom – The Christmas Tree”
I’m writing for the first time in months—my granddaughter started preschool today. She’ll be going twice a week now. I miss her already.
I haven’t had time for writing or anything else since she and her dad came to live with us five months ago. Caring for her has stirred up my world in all sorts of ways, and nothing has really settled yet. The past, the present, the future swirl around in my mind, some bright and sweet, some dark and scary.
I love her beyond words and we are very close, maybe too close. What will happen when she and my son move out? Last week he took her unexpectedly for the day and my home seemed so empty and I felt so lost. I didn’t want to do anything—not write, nor read, nor clean, nor paint, nor walk, nor just sit and think, alone, undisturbed—all the things I wish I had time to do when she’s with me. I couldn’t wait till she came home so I could scoop her up and feel her small, sweet body melt into mine.
We spend our days playing and singing and dancing together. It’s filled with sweet cuddles and kisses, silly games puffing our cheeks and popping them together, playing with puzzles and legos and coloring and reading stories. We swim and pick roses and watch Disney movies together. Making up stories and pretending to be kittens and crocodiles. She loves to play hide and seek, where she hides in plain sight and I pretend I can’t find her while she laughs and giggles, and when I do find her, she demands—AGAIN!—and hides in the same place once more.
But by the afternoon, I’m tired. I’m wishing for a few moments alone. I’m wishing she could play by herself for longer than five minutes at a time, stopping her play to look for me, to demand to be held, to read a story, to come back into the room where she’s playing.
I try to get her to nap, but too often it’s late in the afternoon when she does, at 3 or 4 or 5, when I know doing so that late means she won’t want to go to sleep before 9 or 10. More often she doesn’t nap at all.
“Grandma needs quiet time I tell her,” time away from her is what I mean, but she doesn’t understand that, doesn’t understand that demanding my constant attention frazzles me as the day wears on. Even sitting her in front of the TV to watch cartoons (bad grandma!) doesn’t help as much as you’d think—every commercial she looks for me, and it’s the same with movies. “Come watch with me, Gwamma,” she says in her sweet, tender voice, pulling at my arm. My heartstrings tug, and my nerves tighten.
And then there’s the tug-of-wills, where she tests my boundaries, doesn’t listen when I tell her to leave something alone, to not go in there, not do that. I haunt parenting advise forums on the internet looking for ways to discipline, to cope, to mellow.
What did I do when my children were young?
I don’t remember my daughter ever wearing on my nerves with the demand for constant attention, or defying my will the way my granddaughter does now. My son defied my will on a daily basis, but he wasn’t as demanding of my attention as she seems to be. Still, we had our tug-of-wars too. I remember one dark day when I needed him to take a nap so badly and he simply refused to stay in his room. He’d come out, I’d put him in, he’d come out, I’d put him in, over and over again, like puppets in demented play, him crying and me yelling at first, then me crying and him yelling. I thought I was losing my mind. We were stuck in a hysterical repetition, like a broken record that would not stop. I don’t remember how it ended.
I do remember that I let him play in our fenced backyard by himself for long periods of time when he was a toddler, where he had a swing set, and sand box, and lots of toys. Something I can’t do with my granddaughter where we live now. Even so, he “escaped” several times, wandering off down the street—three years old—to visit grandma five blocks away, or to visit the little green store across a busy street.
Once a police officer brought him home to me. I hadn’t even known he’d gone missing.
I was a bad mother. If that had happened today, I would have been arrested. But things looked different back then. Children were encouraged to spend the day outdoors playing, to be independent. Little boys wandering off with a penny in his pocket to buy candy at the neighborhood store was “cute.” It showed his independence and adventurous spirit, not my poor parenting.
The thought of my little three-year-old granddaughter doing something like that today horrifies me. The thought of her living alone with her father on a busy street with chance of unlocked doors giving her access to the great outdoors makes me want to keep her here at home with me forever.
And yet, and yet, the other day my nerves were so frazzled I wanted to lock myself in a closet just to have a few moments alone without her, without hearing that sweet, tender voice calling out, “Gwamma, where are you?” And I wondered: Is this what drives some parents to lock their children in closets? The thought was so mind-chilling I wanted to sit down and cry.
Instead, I gathered my granddaughter in my arms and let her melt against me.
“I didn’t know where you were,” she tells me frowning, holding my face between her small hands.
“Don’t leave me,” she says, as she does several times every day.
“I won’t, baby,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
But I will leave her. Or rather, she will leave me eventually, when her father finds a place for them to live that’s closer to town, closer to his work. Will she think I abandoned her, betrayed her?
Part of me longs for the peaceful life we had before they moved in. And part of me is terrified at the thought of them leaving.
Treasure what you have now, I tell myself. Don’t think about the past or the future. Now is where we are. Where my arms and heart are full. And while my poor nerves may get frazzled at times for want of the peace and quiet I sometimes crave, it cannot eclipse the wonder and joy of this child and how she fills my heart with light.
What makes compelling art? Why do I find this image of mother and child, and the ones below, so powerful and profound?
I’ve asked these questions since creating a new Pinterest page titled “Mother & Other Lovers.” Somehow I felt compelled to collect and preserve these images for my viewing pleasure.
I could probably write a post for each artwork in the collection, exploring the rich associations and symbolism, both personal and primal, as well as the emotional, philosophical, and spiritual subtexts and connotations. But I’ll start with these four.
One element I’m drawn to is how the depiction of mother and child is a powerful symbol, not only of love, but of unity and wholeness. It depicts two in one, and one in two. Two overlapping and enveloping identities. “Not-two” is the way a Buddhist or Taoist might put it.
The painting by Sikorskaia at the top of the post shows this beautifully. The mother’s body wraps about her breast-feeding infant and fills the whole space with the solid, four-square wholeness of her presence. Her dark head is bent, attentive, surrounded by a halo of light-colored flesh. Her arms, open hand, and bend back form another circle, encircling the first. Her feet tenderly touch each other, and with the raised and lowered legs form a triangle of unity, the base upon which the mother sits.
The dominant colors of blue and gold complement each other. She is sitting on the earth with the mountains at her back. She is grounded and centered, while the child is loose in her arms, able to move and to feed freely, but blending with the mother’s flesh, showing how closely knit they are even while separate beings. The dominant lines creating this painting are round, curved, circling each other. Mother and child are one in body and being. Two in one. One in two.
The following image by Barnet is similar. Mother and child completely fill the space and overflow it. They are facing each other, mirror reflections of each other. She sees herself in her child, the child sees itself in the mother. Her hands are wrapped around the child, but open, as is the child’s hand, reaching up toward the mother, toward its other surrounding self.
The unity here is expressed in layers of gently curving horizontal lines, the gray space between the two indeterminate. The two-ness is more distinct than in the last image we looked at, but the oneness is also clearly seen. Soft shades of grey unite them. But that bit of red fuzz on the child’s head, as well as the vertical slant of the child’s knee and arm, sets them apart. Their eventual separation into two-ness is gently hinted here, unlike the first.
Will Barnet, Mother and Child,1993-2006
The painting by Irwin that follows also creates the powerful feeling of oneness and unity, but without the round and horizontal lines of the first two. Here we see the indistinct features and form of mother and child surrounded by a shadowy, indistinct background. The vertical figure is centered and reaches top to bottom, nearly bisecting the page. Clearly it shows two in one, one in two. The soft, indistinct edges of the form feather into the background, soft and permeable. The Mother and Child are one with each other and one with the surrounding environment. The whole painting is a study of unity and wholeness.
Madonna & Child by Holly Irwin
Two-ness is more evident in the next paintings.
In the first below by Harmon, mother and child again fill the space. Wholeness, oneness, is still the dominant theme. The mother’s face seems blissful, as if she is drinking up the scent of her, to savor her closeness. The sea surrounds them, symbolizing the womb, the place of birth, of oneness. But the child’s dangling legs, the soles of her feet, denote her readiness and ability to separate from her mother. The restless waves at their feet foreshadow the coming parting, when the mother puts down her child. We can imagine them walking hand-in-hand down the beach.
In The Ocean Air by Johanna Harmon
We see this close unity and foreshadowing of separation in the following image by Sorolla as well.
Here, the sea as backdrop both unites the figures of mother/child and introduces the element of separation in the layered waves and wayward boat. The deep shadows and strong light also denotes two-ness–the pairing of opposites. The towel flung over and around mother and child unite them, but all that takes place behind them foreshadows separation. It seems a beautiful, tender, but fleeting moment in time. Unlike the first three images which seem iconic, timeless and eternal.
Sorolla – Masterful colorist “Just Out of the Sea” 1915
This last painting by Larson is probably my favorite among these six–for so many reasons. But first and foremost because it captures that golden glow of late afternoon on the beach, when the strong light casts shadows so deep and dark. The light shimmers around them and through them, uniting them, and revealing a transparency that we see in the figure’s back-lit clothing.
Mother and child are clearly two distinct individuals now. Still, the touching heads and hands form a circle of unity and closeness. Even the shadows at their feet flowing upward through the two figures form a second circle of unity. We still have two-in-one and one-in-two, even while the separate individuals are clearly defined.
There is something nostalgic about this painting. A tender sweetness underscored by the foreshadowing of separation as the two move apart from each other and this singular moment is lost in passing time. We cannot stop passing time, but we can capture it in these sweet moments, and preserve it in our art and our memories.
“Beach Treasures” by Jeffrey T. Larson (1999)
And I suppose that’s why I find all these paintings so powerful and profound. They capture universal and primal experiences we all have shared at one time or another in our journey from one to two and back again.
Do these images speak to you? Which do you favor and why? Visit my Pinterest page to see more.
The novel I am working on is about relationships between mothers and children and all the ways that is expressed, from the most fearful and destructive to the most trusting and freeing. So I’ve been thinking a lot on this topic lately.
A passage that had a huge influence on my understanding of what “mothering” is, or could be, is found in the Tao Te Ching (CHXXV):
There was something complete and nebulous
Which existed before the Heaven and Earth,
Silent, invisible
Unchanging, standing as One,
Unceasing, ever-revolving,
Able to be the Mother of the World.
This Mother of the World, of course, is Tao, the all-pervading, all embracing, unchanging, and unceasing. It’s the thing that evolves, supports, nurtures, protects, and provides space for its “children,” all individual being.
A tall order for a mere human.
Yet something about that passage spoke to me as a woman and mother. It drew within me the desire to embrace my children in that spirit. And I found the mothering of my own two children improved immensely when I was able to step back and project in some way this more expansive sense of mothering that allows them to feel loved and supported without all the worries and anxieties and criticism and fear that accompany a mere human sense of mothering.
This mothering is not as personal, intense, or myopic, as the latter. It doesn’t hover, it doesn’t obsess, it doesn’t fret. It frees them “to be,” and is based on an immense sense of trust—in myself, in them, and in the universe at large. In God, or Tao, or some divine presence or higher power that embraces all of us, and gives each of us the capacity to mother each other.
This is not to say that I often meet this ideal. Far from it.
But I know that I mother my own children best and make fewer mistakes when I’m able to embrace them in that larger, more expansive way. And it feels more natural, less constricted, to mother that way.
I find this kind of mothering works best when all-inclusive. When I embrace all around me with the same mothering spirit. Not just my children, but all children, all people, all things—my home, my community, my work—even the individual objects that fill the space around me and the space outside my window. When I’m able to actually feel and identify with that potential, to “be” the “Mother of the World.”
Mothering, I learned, is a capacity that anyone can embrace: man, woman, child. You don’t have to be a mother, or have children of your own, to mother the world. When you adopt that stance, all things become your children to nurture, cherish, support, love—to help bring to their full potential.
Here’s wishing you all a lovely day of “mothering.”
My mother died seven years ago this month, which is also the month I was born. I wrote a short story, which reads like a prose poem, a few years ago about the experience, caring for her during those last months. I thought I would reblog it here in memory of her. We had a difficult relationship at times, but it was buoyed by the deep love and commitment we had for each other. She is dearly missed.
Celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King days before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the Unites States could not seem more incongruous, nor be more timely. And needed.
