Repeating her-story

The son's report is published online with various requests for parent teacher conferences.  That is what tuition buys these days, online communication and electronic recommendations.  They mean well, work hard but haven't found the odd key that will fit my son's reticence to study.  High potential, low performance, high doses of emotion and low doses of conformity.  I'm frustrated because I know what binds him, I am helpless because I can not unbind him.  I am delighted because we actually like each other.

Long ago when I was just starting out as his mother (I am ever a new mother because I have but one child and I am ever new at mothering whatever stage he is in) I had a dream of standing in a green and flowing field among many other fields lined by stone walls.  I had my arms and head thrown back in submission to the heavens.  I was worshiping the universe in an open bodied prayer, arms wide, back arched, eyes and mouth open.  A thought crossed my mind, that my  odd and spiritual ways would endanger my boy, my baby, my son. Could my love and religion of the earth hurt him?  I held this thought like an odd piece of glass or rock, turning it in my mind, seeking every way to look at it.  As I folded my arms in to myself and as I brought my head down to see the green rolling hills before me an ancient and wizened man holding a rake appoached me.  He smiled with infinite love as he leaned on his rake, and said " your love could never hurt me, Mommy". I woke up with a start.

I see myself today decades away from the wild unruly girl who somehow found the road that led through pot and otherdrugs and boys and school and adventures and danger and dreams and ambitions into a life I hold now, precious and fought for, firm in all its faults as mine, earned, what I share with him, the son.  What would I have him learn? What would I have him know?

The son walks his path, a fretting bird of a mother, trilling and cawing above, hopping ahead to show the way, flying high to scout the path, cooing softly in the dark to comfort -if possible-

As I see him find and fight what binds him I love and know him and find as well some love for and memories of myself.  What gift can a child give greater than an opportunity to know yourself a bit more clearly, and in so knowing give your child that which you may have craved, that which you may have needed, that which you can only now understand.  Time folds over and returns, history, herstory, repeating and reforming our selves through time.