Motherless Poems
Come,
sit beside me mama
let me hold your soft warm hand swollen with despair and hopelessness
The end you so wish for will come soon enough until than
lets wait side by side.
It's peaceful here with your hand in mine.
Together we are two motherless embryos floating in eternal silence
Yes, it's good being here with you seeing you off on your last journey
No more unspoken words between us stillness is our language now
Calm down let go
your war is over let our hearts merge
so yours can beat a little longer Than, when your time comes
l'll kiss you gently, lovingly on your forehead and watch you go
More About Motherless
All throughout my childhood I yearned for my mother. Our lives were scattered,
unstable and rootless. My parents divorced when I was 5 and my mom was left
to be the only caretaker of two young girls. She was troubled and restless and was
constantly on the move. She left my sister and I several times during our childhood
Mostly attempting to complete her higher education abroad.
Mom’s power over me grew ten folds in her absence while I waited in boarding
Schools and foster home for her to come back. Every minute of my waking hours was filled with
yearning and expectation to be with her. My emotional life was narrow and limited.
I was like a small chick waiting in a nest for her mother to bring her food. I closed myself
to anyone else and jealously guarded the place inside me that was reserved for her
and her alone. I was obsessed with her when she was gone, fearful and clingy when
she was present. My chord, my lifeline, found no place to connect itself. I was always
starved for a sense of security, for a place where I could find my restless unavailable
mother and curl up in her soft arms, feeling her warm body.
Thus, my babies in these works are also searching, hungry, and at times desperate.
The emptiness created by the absence of my mother is what fuels every part of this
series. It is part of who I am now. There is this hollow place that I can never fill. In the
work EMPTINESS the baby roams around and finds a mirror that cannot reflect a clear
Image of who this baby is. Without the mother, who are we? infancy is a time in our lives
when nourishment and love is all that we need to cultivate a self that knows contentment and
worth.
In THE NAP the baby finds a moment of quiet and bliss on top of a warm fuzzy sleeping
dog. The pets in my childhood were the sitters that helped sooth my pain and loneliness.
They always were a quiet reassuring place where anxiety and tension diffused and melted.
When my son left home for the first time I started working on images of babies leaving
the nest while still holding on to the umbilical cord. I was exploring my own sense of emptiness
without my boy and it led me to my own experience of abandonment, of feeling motherless.
Motherless is a story with no end. It will stay by my side, a companion for life. No matter
What I do I always return to explore another part of this never ending story that changes
in shape and color with time.
Motherless Essay I
The Road to the End of the Earth
Ben-Shemen, Israel 1950
The dirt road broke away from the major highway and meandered through empty fields scattered with bombshells, relics from the war. It stretched a long way, then passed by some bungalows and finally turned left and abruptly dead-ended in front of a large, grim structure. In the old days, this 5-story building served as a police station and a prison. The courtyard adjacent to the building might have been a place where the prisoners stretched their legs before returning to their cells. Aside from the blue and white flag that hung from a pole, the structure was grey and menacing. In addition to some broken windows, the walls told a tale of flying bullets and exploding grenades.
On a cold fall day our mother brought my sister and me to this desolate place at the end of the earth. I was only six years old. My sister was eight. The police station had now become a boarding school and it was to be our home for the next year. Mom stayed with us for three or four days, then kissed us goodbye and was gone. We slept in dormitories, some with broken windows. The coyotes roamed the area. Once at night they came into a room and attacked a child. We saw bloody sheets and a bloody floor. We never saw the injured child.
There was a little zoo where they kept animals. I spent hours caressing the head of a goat, feeding the chickens or holding a little chick that had just hatched. Once I peed in my pants because I could not make it to the bathroom in time. I was ashamed and for two days wore no underwear until clean clothes were issued. Another time I stepped on a rusty nail. It lodged deeply into my foot. I sat down on the ground and pulled the nail out with great effort. That night, when the pain was unbearable, I wrapped my foot with a hot towel.
There was a young woman, a teacher with short brown hair and a gentle face. I had a crush on her. Whenever she saw me and tried to talk to me I blushed and ran away.
I was lost. My sister was annoyed with me and ignored me. Without my mother, who was I? Our father came to see us with his new Pontiac and his new wife. He set us on the hood of the car and took pictures; then he left and I was lost again.
l often walked as far as I could down the long, meandering, lonely road towards the highway. I sat down on a rock at the side of the road and waited for the bus that would bring my mama back. I waited a long time. Then I turned around and walked back to the grey ugly building. There I sat on the cement fence waiting some more, until I was told to go to my room. At night I lay in bed listening to the howling of wild dogs and coyotes, wishing that mama was there to hold me. Then I cried myself to sleep.
There were no houses, no roads behind the grey ugly building. Everything stopped once you reached the large entryway. In my child's mind I truly believed that I was living at the end of the earth and that all life stopped beyond where we were. It was a comfort to know that I was in a place so distinct, a place that mama couldn't easily forget.
When it is time to fetch my sister and me, she won't get lost. All she has to tell the driver is: "take me down the road to the end of the earth," and she will find us.
Motherless Essay II
Sunset
San Diego, California 2003
It is 2AM. I wake up. Mommy isn't home. I sit up in bed, seized with terror. My sobs waken my older sister. She is furious with me because now she too is upset. I am only eight years old and I already know fear, the kind that travels through your body like a jolt of electricity. pray to the old man with the long white beard and kind eyes who sits up in the sky, the one who could not stop the bombs from falling, who could not save my new born brother, who could not make my Mommy and Daddy stay together. I pray and ask him to please, make my Mommy come home safely. I promise to be good, so good.
Now my sister is crying too.
Half a century has gone by and my mother is dying. In the nursing home, her bed is the one by the large sliding door. I can look out at the inner courtyard, see the grass and the trees and notice the few elderly residents sitting about enjoying the late afternoon sun. Near my mother's bed stands a night table with a radio, a cup with liquid and a piece of paper with names and phone numbers. Facing her against the wall is an old TV that is no longer in use. My mom's head is propped up with a few pillows. Her face is a mask, there is no sign of life. Periodically she opens her eyes a bit, but she does not see me. "This is the look of farewell," I say to myself.
The eight-year old is in the room with me. I do not want her here. Her distress, her longing, her despair scare me. I need to figure this one out by myself. I want to tell her to leave the room, but instead pick her up and put her on my lap. I wrap my arms around her little body and hold her tightly.
"What's wrong with Mommy?" The little girl asks with trembling voice. "Is she going to be OK? I don't want Mommy to go away again."
I whisper: "Look, it's time. She is old. She wants to go. You have me now; you won't be alone.
I'll be here for you, always."
The little girl relaxes in my arms. Her heartbeat slows down and she stops trembling. Her body slowly softens and surrenders to the warmth of my embrace. Finally, she dissolves into me.
I take my mother's hand and put her palm, softer than the finest Chinese silk, against my cheek.
"Eema," I call her "Mommy. Momma. I love you and always will."
I hope she hears me.
I remain by her side and watch the shadows on the curtains as the sun dies in the west.
