mom’s life had great integrity, in a way that, at my age, i seem to be convinced that mine never will.
mom loved all her children. each and every single one. individually and as people, individual people. she never forgot any of them. not a single one, or their individual talents and inclinations and gifts. never. every single person she ever taught was known and catalogued in her mind by name and with their own particular brand of loving attachment. *bitter laugh* i know more about the brilliant people of my generation from my area than anyone should, just from the admiring mentions around the diningroom table.
i don’t even know what it would be like to have that vast a capacity for love and life and support.
but this was her mission. a niche to be filled: gifted kids– at the age when they’re most vulnerable: when they *most* need the support of a peer group, and the mental distraction of intellectual challenge, to know they’re not crazy. she remembered that need, and determined herself to fill it, because nobody else was, or would.
that was the mission. but really, it was less mission than pure love: the purest, the one that dares to teach and wrangle the most confused people at the most confused age there is. and it was perfect in that way that dares to defy everything: the dismissal of teachers who taught little ones, the condescension of high-school teachers who think they have a corner on everything.
and it mattered nothing. what she cared about was imparting something and keeping the best minds of our generation sane, within the system that wasn’t really built to handle them.
my life will never have that kind of integrity, that intense yet ground-level credibility.
i loved my mom. sometimes i resented the love i could sense radiant and poured on them from her, while i felt as if i got nothing but obsessive control: often i wonder who got the best of the deal. and sometimes i don’t wonder at all. it doesn’t matter. one doesn’t pick one’s mom.
i loved my mom. i love my mom. this was my mom: she loved and served.
i wanted so much to share with her her own child’s wild, transgressive, brilliant, vibrating life. and let us be realistic: this is my journal and i will have a purple moment, because i am grieved beyond, i think, shock, beyond, i think, what anyone would understand: instead of sharing my life with her, i got to watch her die in my arms.
i miss her so much. so much. so much. it’s beyond expression. it is excruciating every day. they tell it never ends, but gets better. i hope so.
pnut galry