[lit-ideas] Thanks, Mom
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 10:58:46 -0500
Garrison Keilor says that if you're the third or fourth born, you're likely
to be a creature of habit. Of what I know of marriage, I'd have to agree,
though I'd like to believe I was called forth out of pure love. None of us,
even old us, feels comfortable contemplating our parents' sexual lives.
Especially that of our mothers. I say all that with nothing to support it
but my own prejudice, but that's all I ever have to work with. Whether the
act of coitus that resulted in me was a coition of romantic vision or of
diversion doesn't matter: Mama gave gamete me womb to grow and nurtured me
for thirty-four years. Her beliefs were wonderfully at odds with a culture
that values convention. A resentful feminist long before Betty Friedan. A
lover of argumentation, dinners (at her instigation)were debating sessions.
She gave all six of us womb and later loving, liberal room to become
ourselves. I remember (though I could not have been more than four) her
telling me after some dramatic event in my childhood that there was nothing
I ever do that would make her stop loving me. "All right," I thought, "I'm
set."
Thanks, Mom.
Mike Geary
Motherless in Memphis
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