Who Was She? Part Two
My mother died on February 17th.
In recent years I called her Mum as a repair for the awkwardness in my youth that arose from obeying my father’s insistence that we call her Mother. This stilted salutation, I believe, was to repair the fall from aristocracy that our family suffered by leaving Russia. The proper word really would have been Mama but it didn’t stick, maybe because we were repairing our Russianness too. So much brokenness, never spoken but always implied.
Who was my mother? Who are any of us under all those repairs?
While I was mourning her loss, my Zen teacher, Roshi Joshin, asked if there was an image of her that came to mind, a way that I could sense her presence now. I thought of a butterfly, then changed my mind because butterflies land on things, and my impression of her was that she never really landed. "Perhaps a hummingbird," said my daughter. Perhaps. All I know is that I couldn’t reach her, couldn’t touch her. Or I couldn’t get her to reach me. I’m not sure what the difference is.
Later I realized that she saw me as a butterfly. And when I saw one several days later, seeming to call for my attention at the window, I realized that she was present in the way I see myself. In fact, my first memory is of a blue butterfly crushed by my brother. Maybe I expressed it to my mother. Or maybe I constructed it from things she said. Anyway she wrote a poem called "Blue Butterfly" for my 50th birthday. It memorializes the time when a photographer asked to use my picture in an ad, then saw that my legs were in casts and I could not walk. Here’s an excerpt:
Here was a spotlight on the indifference around, the dismay of a mother,
the trust of a child, and her innocent faith that she would be well,
made so by the grown-ups who loved her. With a turn of the prism,
our powerlessness was bared in the glare. A slight twist cast a softer
yet lucid light on the sweetness of innocence that, much too soon,
would be lost.
Yet another refraction made blaze the pain that awaited
in the tomorrows, no matter our will or resolve. In the midst of this spin,
there she sat, my blue butterfly, tranquil still in the moment.
Time enough later to learn of the future and change.
Refractions upon refractions. Reading her poem now, I understand that my illness (JRA) destroyed her idea of innocence and beauty, and there she was, spinning, while I sat, tranquil still. Of course I had no choice; I couldn’t get up and walk, could I? And this, in a nutshell, produced my lifelong struggle. She was moving so fast I couldn’t sense her center. I felt like I needed to move faster but I couldn’t. The frustration was immense. When I expressed it, they called it rage. And then it became rage. Such is the tragedy of interconnection, healed somewhat by poetry belated.
The 9th Zen precept is classically translated as "not being angry." I remembered that the Zen Peacemaker version was something like 'transform suffering into wisdom,' but when I went to look it up, it had changed! Now it is "bearing witness to emotions that arise."
Oh, if only someone had been able to bear witness then! How different our lives could have been if she had been able to bear witness to her dismay and grief instead of trying to escape it; how different had I realized that brokenness is part of the nature of things, to be included, not rejected. What if the photographer had chosen to feature the disabled girl? How different the perceptions of all those consumers of culture, how different our understandings of each other!
Thankfully the world is trying to change. Thankfully I have access to this wisdom now as I heal and accept my body as it is. I just listened to an On Being podcast with Resmaa Menakem on healing racial trauma through awareness of the body and an understanding of the context of trauma. And our own Village Zendo featured a talk by Tokuyu Hoshi on brokenness. And yesterday I watched a conversation on Disability Justice sponsored by Dance NYC on Facebook. We are bearing witness. We are acting. We are healing.
was me not you
I thought
I knew
butterfly adieu
now who?
Related: Who Was She? Part One
June 18, 2020
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Reader Comments (3)
Thank you. At this time, I needed to read your words on Bearing Witness - to the pain, to the rage - to the understanding, and to the acceptance.
Here's a comment from a zen friend:
Your reflections on your mother touched me deeply. As you all know, I am currently in the process of mourning my father and together with that, the complications of our relationship. For me as well, Joshin and other teachers have helped me in embracing the complexity and continuing the conversation beyond his death.
I also was very moved by your reaction to the way your mother described you in her poem as a “ tranquil, still blue butterfly”. I can relate to the frustration you have around this description and treatment of you which did not leave space and room for your rage, and equated your stillness with calmness...It makes me think of Jim’s description of Laura in the glass menagerie. He called her “blue roses” ( I was struck now how he misheard her illness pleurosis , which ironically is a lung disease...). She feels the name is wrong for her, but he condescendingly tells her it’s fitting because she is unique. Her mother also treats her like a fragile glass unicorn, due to her difference.
You have always been our teacher at the VZ, helping to give a bold voice to our different abilities, allowing space for the anger as a true expression of those who have been marginalized. stillness can only come when we fully realize and manifest all of what we are, and not the projection of society on us. This is true around race and gender and sexuality too, all the wonders we explored that year together in that path class and continue to do so till this very day.
I love the e.e Cummings poem that William’s attached to the glass menagerie... this part in particular makes me think of you:
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
And another zen friend:
Just getting around to reading your writings now and am moved again, by these lines in particular: “how different had I realized that brokenness is part of the nature of things, to be included, not rejected. What if the photographer had chosen to feature the disabled girl?”
Yes! What if ALL the photographers had chosen to feature ALL the people JUST as they are instead of saving their film for some idealized/”perfect” body?! What if EVERYONE could realize they are unique and precious and equally deserving of the cover shot as ANYONE else? Just like each flower, each straight tree or crooked tree is exquisitely beautiful precisely because it is exactly itself.
What if no one had to believe the bullshit suffering story of being “less than” based on the color of their skin or the structure of their body? “Less than” what?
AND, what if there was no such thing as “broken” anyway? Not “broken,” different. And, at the end of the day, EVERYTHING/EVERYONE is different from EVERYTHING/EVERYONE else. No two things can ever be the same no matter how hard one tries to be “just like” someone/something else that’s “better.”
AND, what’s interesting after listening to the Resmaa Menakem talk in which he discusses how “bodies of culture” are deviant/different FROM what? From “whiteness,” just like “broken” or “dis-abled” bodies are assumed to be different FROM what? From “abled” bodies? What is an “abled” body?? Aren’t ALL bodies (no matter the size, shape, or color) fucking amazing and very “able”? I mean, they appeared out of “matter” cooked in the center of stars and formed into these forms that allow the universe to experience itself from myriad unique perspectives. What more can you fucking ask for???! Ha! Can you imagine how UTTERLY BORING the world would be if we all looked the same/had the same perspective? Awful.
May we keep marching physically and virtually until ALL bodies/beings know they are beautiful.