Prolifically Raw: Mothering a Son...

Monday, August 27, 2007

Mothering a Son...

�is my greatest personal accomplishment in this life. Mothering Spencer is also my greatest teaching. And beware, this is not a writing about the bliss of motherhood, complete with how self-less the experience has made me or how much I love projecting my identity onto a child in some kind of Hallmark moment of flower bouquets and handprints in clay.

No. This is about waking up. This is about how one child stimulated me into that awakening and how, when I finally stopped bitching how how much work he was, learned this truth!

Before I became his mother, Spencer was nudging me into consciousness. From the other side, as an idea forming within my body and mind, he was bringing me to understand that I had to turn and face my life honestly. I had to find and know this self I called Jennifer. More, I had to love this woman, truly, deeply and without reservation, in order to be truly at home in my skin and thus, in the world.

So, I got to work.

Spencer�s impact on my life is imprinted in Blackbird, Still Waters and Show Me the Way. In the last book, Spencer comes fully to life. He walks, talks, breathes and is. We have been at this process together for a decade now. As he grows in his life, reaching toward his own potential, which will always be connected to me and yet is his own, I learn more each day. So much of the time, I think very little about Spencer. If his needs are covered, I know my greatest work is about myself, so I meditate, I do healing work, I write and whatever else I am called to do...because I know that my healing is his healing.

A great teacher told me to follow the spirit of others, verses trying to alter their course. I realize now, I�ve been following my boys spirit from the beginning, even before that day auspicious day of his birth.

And, look at him now getting his grown up teeth, standing almost as tall as me, with feet bigger than mine and hands that big too.

Look at him connected to Tibetan Buddhism more than I will ever be, already having found a Tibetan Guru who he adores and speaks to in moments of need.

Look at him addicted to buying Lego�s and playing video games and only making friends with the most mismatched kids at school!

The spirit of my child is this interesting contradiction, both profoundly spiritual and yet, of this time. He is quirky too. He has learning challenges that have made reading nearly impossible and yet can construct a Lego machine so fast, it will make my eyes cross. He wears his glasses and can barely struggle through a math problem, yet can navigate a complex video game with a few fast moves of his thumbs and forefingers.

His mind is like grease lightening, and so are his legs. God he can run fast!

Mothering my son has been like this: I have been following his spirit and watching how he, in fact, has been teaching me with no more than the grace of his existence. He has been the main course meal of my life. (Jo Jo, she is my desert!!)

How lucky I am to be a mother, how lucky I am that this boy is my son.