I could never hate my mother. Far as I’ve had to run from her, as much as I’ve had to extricate myself from her frightened and harsh words in order to be free, I do love her. My mother, the untamable artist, who turns lumps of clay into wriggling spheres of insect life and covers canvases in voluptuous naked bodies with troubled faces. My mother, the athlete, who kicked footballs in the backyard and learned to play hockey at 40. My mother, the conservationist, with her spadefoot toad terrarium that filled half her bedroom, and all the fritillary butterflies we raised from eggs and caterpillars. My mother, the nurse, who dug parasitic fly larvae from kitten flesh to save their lives.
She taught me to see the details of life without the filter of human expectation and desire. She showed me the whole world, all its wildness and coarseness that I love so dearly. How easily this world existed, I learned, when we turned out the lights in the living room and watched rats venture out of the bushes to eat cat food she’d put on the porch for them; when we searched for the mud-and-silk capped tunnels of trapdoor spiders in the canyons two blocks away; when she taught me to recognize hawk calls and coyote howls and bursts of midnight mockingbird song that floated in through my bedroom window. When I am overwhelmed by the ennui of everyday human life, or frightened by news that the world is going to shit, I find sanctuary in my connection to this persistent world of birds and bugs, of wild beasts, of moon, of changing seasons. If anyone else had raised me, I might very well have sought this comfort in fast cars or fancy restaurants or knowing which celebrity is marrying whom and in what dress. I might never have been the crow lady, or Pilot’s mom, or the girl who drove to the Arctic Ocean.
This is my entry for the #monomad challenge, held daily in the Black and White Community.
Give it a try. All of it. Live.
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Crows featured are the Northwestern Crows of San Juan Island, Washington, USA.
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