Another dream, this time it's mother again. She's standing with her childlike face expressions, like when she's half joking about wanting a certain thing, or over dramatizing a situation. She doesn't need doing those usually, she always gets what she wants, she has no problem with demanding, and people just simply oblige. She has that powerful affect on people, they all wanted to satisfy her. Her women friends, neighbours, family members...
She was standing as in plea for my help, she has wet herself again, urine running on the inside of her legs. She was asking to be brought to the pool. I obliged, silently without uttering a word. I bring her to the pool, and the moment I am helping her down the water, she turns into baby Yasmina between my hands, I am not holding a fidgety excited baby, splishing and splashing with her legs and feet at the water.
I had always mothered my mother, she was always a child to me, lacking, needing, and missing, but we kept appearances, and we stuck to the roles and avatars we were playing. Except I couldn't resist but to rebel, because appearances never meant much to me, I always responded to essence. Her essence was crying out insecurity, she was masking it with her domineering persona, deep voice, stern and grit, a very masculine look. I don't know how nobody got it, the mere sight of her weeping over the least sentimental of scenes on the screen exposed her. Nobody saw these signs, her sentimental self needed to be acted out, seen, mirrored... but nobody was ever home, it isn't just a contemporary fad, this disconnection.
I mothered my mother, I loved her, and my love used to flow where it was mostly needed. She took it, I nursed her back to health during her first operation when I was 9. I waited alone outside the operation room for hours, I helped and was around holding space for her and her pain when she suffered the pain episodes from her apendix prior to that. I was the one person outside the operation room when they were removing her cancer, hours on end pacing the hallway like a mad person. I was the only sane one, I was 19, engaged to be married, like a naive idiot, but nobody had time to guide, support, listen to me, or say anything to me, life was happening, and I obliged.
I arrived from Jordan on the evening before her passing away. My auntie rang me there told me to come if I can, I understood the hidden message, I obliged. I arrive at a very crowded room, my grandma's living room full with mother's relatives. On her lap there lies a baby, everyone was taking photos. My mother looks like death itself, carrying life between her hands, and the famous detachment you could almost always spot if you'd pay attention.
After the guests left, and the pretending ended, and the fake, empty, overly sentimental words shared between all, she retired to her special bed in the big reception area where she was sleeping for the last 6 months since her operation and journey batterling cancer started. I lied down on the couch facing her bed, by the window, like it used to be the way, and sister on the other couch by the other wall, like used to be the case always. The big clock was ticking like usual, and for a moment I breathed a fresh air of relief, that at least I don't have to be here and do that every single day anymore, that marriage removed my repsonsiblities towards them, the so called loving family. I had grew so tired from the religiousness, the hallow words, the gosspip, the shaming and blaming, the high pitched voices, the imposing actions and sayings. But then my heart sunk, it hit me hard that this could be it, the very end. She calls to us both my sister and I before she sleeps, in an unfashiponable manner. In an unfashionable manner too she held us both close to her, and uttered the word "habibeteh ento".
I had a shock, my gut feeling was on point, she's leaving.
That was her goodbye. Finally, towards the very end, after a very long painful life of pretending, assuming, playing roles and games, manipulating, using, avoiding, rejecting, dissociating... there comes a moment of truth. We were her beloved daughters after all?! She did love us after all, we did matter after all. We needed a moment to grasp the mere fact that she acknowledged us to begin with, let alone address a single sentence dedicated to us alone, and just that.
I couldn't stop my tears, I whimpered, there was so much more mothering to do, even towards the very last moment, I pretended to be her daughter still. I loved her unconditionally still. My own needs and pains were kept for myself to deal with like it always was the way.
At the very early hours of dawn, she calls us from the bathroom, she has wet herself, a first time. She knew she was leaving, she asks us to wake my auntie up, it was time. Everybody was up, she give clear instructions to my sister not to allow any machines to be used on her. She goes back to bed, and wets herself again, and we all knew for sure this was it. They shouldn't have called the ambulance, I went down the stairs with them while looking at her face, she was gone half way through the stairs. At the hospital they ignore every instruction she gave, they put her on machines, and her heart was active. For few days my sister kept the show of crying and making a big fuss and drama at the hospital, she has always been the theatrical type. I kept my pain for myself, there was pain over pain over pain, and the so called people and family, just won't listen... I was too young for my voice to be heard, I did not matter, and so whatever the so called grown ups decide, goes. It doesn't matter what that dying woman wanted, it's always about what the people wanted, in life, and in death.
After few days of torment, they put an end to it, they officially released her from the claws of this most messed up religious and backwardly traditional society and living.
I kept seeing my mother in the dreams for years after her passing. She was always like her sickness state, silent, sad, lifeless. She was depressed and very sad always. As the years went by, things changed slightly, but I learned to look out for cues of whatever is happening in my own psyche through those dreams.
When I got pregnant at the age of 23, a total accident, while I was finally committed to attending university and starting to shift and fix my life, I knew it in me this was a calling to heal and amend more of my mother wound. There were moments very early on of baby and toddler Yasmina when she'd look the spitting image of my mother. The similarity grew with time and especially in the recent years. The droopiness of her eyes, the melancholia, the freckles, the mind, the ways about her...
And then comes the pain she inflicted on me, simply by her being herself, and I mine.
Mother has indeed turned into Yasmina, both born in July, only a week away.
The water symbol is very strong for them too, being cancerians, to say the least...
Cleaning, cleansing, washing, submerging... the pool in the dream is big in symbology too.
And there we were, all three of us, maiden, mother, crone, shifting and turning. Who's what...
Was I destined to be always the giver, the doer, or was all of that only just the curse.
I got my mother's freckles, and my father's varicose.
Will I succeed to overcome the genes, to overcome the generational traumas, to overcome the heavy weights of bounding emotions and sit-backs?
I got up from bed feeling heavy and tired, I was back to strong bleeding through the night, my ovaries haven't stopped shaking since yesterday. I went to the window where the birds come, to find a most unique sight. It wasn't a single pigeon or a couple, but a mother pigeon and her baby. For almost three years of being in this apartment this was never something we ever see. We don't see the babies! She sat there with her young one with the backs to us, looking ahead on the mountains. When they sensed my presence they moved a little, but did not fly away. I had tears running down my cheek, I thought to myself how excited I would've been if Yasmina was around to tell her about and show her our new guests. But alas those are moments like in the dream too, it was only I and whatever it left in me to write these words away, if anything, for fear of losing myself totally to sadness...
The mother and baby pigeon sight has triggered me a lot, but I sat with the emotions and went through the notions, just like after processing the dream. They keep coming and hitting hard, like waves, sometimes big and loud, other times soft and gentle. I'll rejoice in the foam to take a breather if there ever was a way out of this deep deep sea and into my grounding roots again, uncut, re-rooted, re-birthed.
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