I.
I listened to a certain Kate Stephenson’s ‘For the Daughter I’ll Never Have’ and promptly cried in bed for the next 3 hours.
I’m now going to need you, reader, to click the link and spend the next 3 minutes 34 seconds listening to the song, and then come back to me.
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Did you watch the video? Can we please talk about how devastating that song is? How dare you write the most heart wrenching, beautiful lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life, Kate Stephenson??
II.
I have always wanted to write about my mum, but I cry whenever I think about her (as regular people do) and it is incredibly difficult to see or write through watery vision.
If you’ve read my previous writings, you’ll know my mum and I are very close.
I’m an only child, we lived abroad and my dad worked in a different city. Mum left her home, family and friends to raise a child in a country she couldn’t even speak the language of. She’s been a mother first, human second for the first 19 years of my life, and it’s only recently that she and I have somewhat become friends.
She will never read this, firstly because her eye sight is bad and she refuses to wear glasses on a daily basis. And secondly, and more importantly, her English is not the best. And she’d prefer that I just tell her what I wrote about over our new bubble tea find of the week (chestnut and oolong milk tea, 30% sweetness, extra milk foam).
Mum is the youngest of three, easily overlooked and emotionally neglected by parents who were extravagant and undeniably bad with money.
She studied psychology in university because her sister tried to get her to apply to Russian literature of all things and she simply did not want to do that.
She then got an interior design license and moved to the big city of Seoul alone, worked an office job, went to a few underground heavy metal gigs in her pristine white t-shirt and straight legged jeans (bold choice), and got the tiniest mini Schnauzer puppy that she named Plato.
Her family then went bankrupt. She moved back to her hometown, Plato in hand. She worked in her old friend’s bookshop and looked after the same, neglectful parents that now looked to her for support.
She then got married to my dad, as arranged by my aunt and grandmother. She said she believed that he was an honest worker, and maybe that was enough. (I childishly wish my mum could have had true, maddening love. Go on dates. Be a little messy, make a few mistakes. I wish she could have banked on much more than ‘he seems nice’.)
She moved to Indonesia, where my dad had been working since the early 90s.
And she had me.
III.
I love my mum. We don’t look exactly like each other, nor do we think the exact same way. We squabble and argue and debate our way through most everything. Our conversations run in circles and tangents, voices raising without malice, but with a constant twinge of ‘please just agree with me’.
In recent years I catch my reflection and see someone who could be a younger version of her.
My cheeks are fuller, but the tilt of my smile is hers.
My eyes crinkle the way hers do when I laugh. They also tear up when I laugh harder, just as hers do.
We have the same mannerisms. We roll our eyes when we’re fed up, we arch our left brows when feeling particularly inquisitive (pissed) and when we’re itching to comment on something. We purse our lips as white people smile when they feel awkward. (Do you know what smile I mean? Like the straight lined smile you do when you’re walking down the corridor or street and you make eye contact with someone you feel obligated to acknowledge?)
I’ve been unhappy with my features in years past, but I feel differently now.
I am a reflection of my mum and the generations of mums and daughters before us with our same wide cheek-bones, who laugh a little too hard with our faces.
How can I feel alone or disdain for my features when I am evidence that my face has been loved before?
IV.
When I asked my mum what thoughts and feelings she had when she discovered that she had me, the following was her reply.
“Well… I cried a lot.” (Relatable.) She then followed,
“I felt pretty remorseful that I was bringing you into this world. You didn’t ask to be born in this shitty world, you were just a little baby. And I felt sorry. For you and for Plato, because I knew I couldn’t be there for him the same way I had before. I actually cried over Plato a lot more after I came to terms with the pregnancy.”
I am saddened to find this sentiment to be pretty relatable (disregarding the revelation that I have never been an only child in my mother’s eyes, but the second child to a canine firstborn).
We apparently have around 2 years to fix our planet, reproductive rights are still somehow a point of contention, and the ultra rich won’t let up their boots on our throats.
I’m terrified to live in the world on my own and keep myself safe, let alone bring a whole baby child into it.
How do you know if you could be completely selfless for your child? That you could give up, sacrifice so much of yourself for this being without any crumb of resentment? Does it come naturally? Is it an active choice that you make every day?
What if my child resents me for being born? Would they look like me? Would they like that they looked like me? Would they know to love themselves? What if they never do?
Does my mum see herself in me? Does she mourn her youth when she does? Does she ever wonder if she would have been happier without me?
What if they were wronged by someone they loved? What if I couldn’t help them, even if I tried? Would they be okay?
Would I still be able to tell them they’d be okay?
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Every day I see mothers crying over the grey, limp bodies of their children. I see children crying out, throats raw and their fingers empty where their mothers’ hands should be. How can I wish that pain upon anyone else, let alone myself?
V.
A wistful voice in my head tells me I would have been a good mum. Or at least, I would have tried, really really hard.
I think we could have had the lazy mornings, the wonky pancakes, the daily struggle to tame our hair.
We could have had the nights my mum and I often had - I could have read them The Little Prince. I would have been as sneaky as my mum was with the number of pages I’d read them each night, so they’d eventually get fed up with my snail pace and pick the book up themselves.
I’d introduce them to all the music, all the films that I learned to feel with, and my heart would have beaten incessantly in my chest to see all those wonderful things bloom in their eyes for the first time.
We would have had craft nights. I would have taught them how to make paper mache fish to hang on their walls. We would have DIY-ed all our Halloween costumes (they’d be the best ones in school) and years later, we would have found glitter in their childhood carpet and we would have laughed about it.
I think I would have been good at comforting them, the way I comfort my students. I think I’d teach my child to stand tall, to feel pride, to be brave enough to give love to those that needed it. I’d look at their little face and see my eyes, my mum’s eyes looking up at me.
I’d pick them up, waterfall eyes and streaming noses and all. I’d trust them to come to me for help. I’d tuck them into bed and breathe in relief that even with my faults and mistakes in life, I had done one thing completely right.
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But then the yearning passes, and I’ve thought myself into the same corner again.
(My mother’s eyes won’t be passed on to another.)
I am too afraid and too selfish.
Maybe in another universe.