It’s been a week of wonderful, high-altitude peaks, and dark, deep valleys with a lot of sickness and mundane life bits and bobs in-between. Struck a number of times this week, by the push and pull of parenthood, I found myself ruminating on what the role profiles mean in our own home. Then, much more distressingly, what these roles ask of caregivers in events regularly paired with guns, that show up in the news. I think I am feeling the stark contrast between what people are asked to give in this role, and the lack of protections then extended to our younger ones by this nation.

*Below, I say “Mothers” because in this piece I am writing it in first-person, and that is how I identify. However, this “Mother” character can be applied to any caregiving role, and is meant to be inclusive of any and all genders and identities. If you pour from your cup into someone else’s, I see you in this piece with me/us.

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Mothers Everywhere

Mothers everywhere,

follow me 

into the ethereal mist,

to a land where you must be 

EVERYTHING 

and 

NOTHING 

all at once 

AND

not at all.

Your value is being measured,

along with your body,

at all times 

and a misstep or falter

and you will be dinged;

Sorry.

Sadly,

we had to take a point from your scoreboard for overreacting.

I hear your confusion and concerns ma’am,

but please sit down 

and calm down, 

and stop worrying. 

The child/ren you’d die to protect 

have been taught 

how to hide under things

and how to be

crammed and jammed

into the “safer”, dark, locked corners in their land 

of education.

You see, daft mama,

we simply can’t ask

our enraged members to lay down their weapons.

They are too precious, you know. 

The guns I mean, silly lady; the kids will 

move on afterwards, potential scars running through their expanding minds 

pervasively.

Fear and anger may take root for the next generations

to shoulder and witness, and yet

what is to be done?

It matters not 

what those beyond the fray 

think about you, though

because our personalized hammers,

that have carefully been forged

by our very own iron fists,

are fully capable of 

crushing our own spirits.

It’s these handcrafted tools, used as weapons,

that can pound, pound, pound us, 

to the depths of dark perfectionism

the hardest of all.

Mothers as martyrs,

we are not,

but society will never stop

waving their finger to demand 

that we live for all, and

we give for all,

and yet we take nothing but our polite 

thank you’s,

wrapped in their paper-thin, linen napkins.

So, we close our eyes 

for a brief reprieve,

and grab the nearest ledge 

to steady ourselves 

in order to efficiently get back out there.

We do what we do best, and

we straighten our spines

and we take a deep breath, 

in order to prepare ourselves

to administer another dose 

of a love beyond measure 

again &

again &

again,

amen.