mothers of sons and sons of mothers

Thank you to Her Bad Mother for her courage and inspiration. Go here for more writing from other blogging mothers about Speaking a Joy Which Can't Be Words.
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There’s always been something a little off-putting to me about the blushing, leaning, almost shy affection some mothers show their adult sons. Perhaps it wouldn’t feel this way if it wasn’t paired with the obliviousness of the sons themselves, who are seemingly unaware of their mothers’ deep desire for an extended embrace, a question about their day or their life, or the asking of their opinion about something interesting. These men value their mothers, depend on them and love them, but seem to fail to see them as dynamic people outside of the mother role. It’s as if the mother of a grown man is still sort of standing there and holding the boy’s dirty socks, and the son is still leaving his plate and his crumbs on the kitchen table. The mother watches the son intently, but the son does not really look at her.

And while watching this play out among the men and mothers in my life still seems sort of disturbingly retro to me, I understand it better now. I empathize with the mother in that role in new ways now that I am a mother of two sons myself. I never could have predicted or imagined how deeply soulful and physical the love for my children would be, how this love, this almost painful love, would be felt in my bones. Every leaving stage settles deeper into my bones as I leave it, into physical memory; something that feels like phantom love as my body remembers what it was like to hold my newborns and smell their fuzzy heads. My bodies remembers what it was like to nurse, and rock, to soothe and embrace their tiny bodies with my whole arms, meeting, in that moment, their whole needs. My body remembers the engulfing velvet love, the loveliest blue fog, settling over both of us in a cloak of deep peace, crowding everything else out.

It is, to properly and honestly name it, a type of sensual love, though one that has nothing to do with sex, It is the physically felt love of a mother for her child; his scent, his softness, the bedazzling sight of him, even the warmth of his neck and the coolness of the bottoms of his feet. And it is fleeting.

I know all the good and also the less honorable reasons we often don’t dare speak of this. I know that this type of love is tainted, even broken for some women because their experiences lead them to need thicker boundaries between love and the pleasures of the senses. This is, perhaps, a small tragedy. I know that any type of love is vulnerable to exploitation, and also that exploitation of any kind of human impulse is everywhere. Perhaps also, one must consider the flip side of mother love, in the tendency to see our children, especially sons, as gods, even in the face of their imperfections, or even egregious mistakes. None of those things make mother love any less real or natural, they just make it harder, or riskier, to talk about.

But while physical mother love is not about sex, gender is not irrelevant. It is, in fact, probably at least part of what eventually gets in the way, as the same-gendered, mothers and daughters, are expected to stay together, growing closer over the years in their commonly experienced life stages. The sons grow away from their mothers, and cleave to other women (at least most of the time) for a new and wholly different purpose. Their sensual needs, which were once about attachment, security, and learning to love, are now broader, and include the sexual.

This is, or course, not a new theme. One could argue for culture, biology or both, but I suspect that however repulsive the notion of sons leaving while daughters stay is, it is still at least a bit of reality for many of today’s mothers. The phantom love that remains is, perhaps, a deep secret, carried in the hearts of most mothers as they go about their lives, forever changed by that loving. And their sons, while perhaps appreciative and certainly the better for it, do not seem to know this.

I may very well be the holding-back, slightly yearning mother of my adult sons one day. And maybe I will hand them some of what I have written since their birth, and allow them to see for themselves. Perhaps that deep secret will actually become transparent, and perhaps my sons will have their own phantom memories, the ones that laid the pathway for loving and attachment, and the innocent pleasures of touch. This is part of why I write.

Someday, if I write about it, I hope that I can better hold onto that phantom love, those physically remembered memories, and know that I also ruminated, and theorized, and probed. That I had an opinion or two while wiping the butts, pureeing the carrots and folding the laundry while watching my boys. That despite any exploitation I have suffered myself, I have dared to love completely, innocently, and with my entire self, even as they move, inevitably into their own being.

Comments

[Lisa]

My MIL used to come over and, for no particular reason (like not that she spilled something on her shirt), decide to change into a T-shirt of my "DH". It drove me batty. Very weird. I vowed to never do anything like that.

I still think she is over the top in this respect, she has managed to alienate all the women in each of her sons lives by pushing them away. However, when reading this...your statement about daughters stay and sons go and the very physical love a mother has for her child. I know that you are correct and the fact that I have only two sons pains me. I understand this pain of watching your sons grow up and away much better now.

Although I still hope to welcome my sons' girlfriends and wives, and never mark my territory by wearing their T shirts when they are adults, I do worry sometimes about the pain of separation. In some ways, it is unbelievable to me that I can spend 20 years devoting my life to them, wiping butts, breastfeeding, hauling them around everywhere, only to have them go move a thousand miles away and only talk to me on birthdays and holidays. But that is the goal, right? To guide them to independence and to follow their dreams?

Oh, tough stuff that I haven't completely dealt with in my head, yet. Good post, very honest.

[Writer Chica]

this is so true. My heart breaks a little at each leaving stage. Already I worry about the time when Toddler will no longer want to sit on my lap and be held.

[Mardougrrl]

*sniff* Beautiful post.

"Every leaving stage settles deeper into my bones as I leave it, into physical memory; something that feels like phantom love as my body remembers what it was like to hold my newborns and smell their fuzzy heads. My bodies remembers what it was like to nurse, and rock, to soothe and embrace their tiny bodies with my whole arms, meeting, in that moment, their whole needs. My body remembers the engulfing velvet love, the loveliest blue fog, settling over both of us in a cloak of deep peace, crowding everything else out."

Thank you for putting that into words--that's it EXACTLY.

[bubandpie]

This post speaks to so many of the hopes and fears and desires I've felt as a mother of a boy. I've seen the mothers you write about - and I've wanted the girl I eventually got in part because of the ideas you articulate.

This is my first visit to your blog ... but I'll be back!

[KTP]

"forever changed by that loving"

Yeah. Me too.

[Suz]

I really love this posting, especially because it concentrated on the love of mothers for sons - something that I've pondered as well while pureeing the carrots and folding the laundry. The only thing I think of when wiping butts is how I can avoid getting poo on my fingers.