ARE YOU MY MOTHER? A story of being lost and found on Twitter
I don’t *really* have a mom.
It was the night before my mother’s funeral and I was just realizing this same truth. Her tweet was a rally call and the world of intimate strangers was glad to answer.
I was a middle-aged orphan receiving condolences on-line, each falling flat before soothing my soul. Half expected me to be sad. Shouldn’t I be? What vulturous thought to not be overcome with grief. The others wanted me to feel free, my care-giving responsibilities complete.
Here she was sounding confident in her familiar. Here I was flitting to and fro on social media, like a frantic bird in search of the nest that had been blown apart in a thunderstorm.
I would need to build my own emotional home. But how could I? My mother had never taught me how to fly.
Does anyone? No, that’s not the question. I know people who fly. The question is this one:
Does anyone really have a mother?
Do we even know what proper human mothering requires?
They say the mother bird pushes the baby from the nest and voila. Well, ok, eventually with some trial and error, that baby bird learns how to fly.
I wonder. Is there a perfect moment? Does mother bird ever push too soon? Before the baby has strength enough to lift those heavy appendages that droop past her belly, does mother ever push then? How many baby birds die by falling?
I think of a human baby, pushed out into the world. What if a mother rose from her labor and simply walked away, leaving the baby on the bed, the birth nest?
What if she came back only to drop a little nourishment in that mouth, perhaps propping a milk bottle on a pillow, aiming the nipple in that little mouth’s direction?
Of course a human is a mammal, knowing only how to suck, not even ready to control its head, neither strength nor coordination to tilt back its neck and part its jaws.
We are not even birds. How much more we need. Even the Twitter world knows it.
I read that tweet and decided this baby was one of those, pushed out too soon. I believed that she was a fallen, with only nature’s inexplicable drive to live helping this wounded hatch-ling last so long.
I determined that she needed nurture as some dormant primordial urge rushed up in me. Step back flock, this one is mine. I will pull her close. I will sing her lullabies and brush her hair. She was announcing her graduation and I quickly replied.
Like so many mothers, I answered what she didn’t ask. I drew attention to myself. My twitter reply proves it, attracting more attention than any tweet I’ve ever made.
I did what fulfilled me. I sent her cookies. Well, not even cookies. I sent her a door dash gift card. She chose cookies. After a private exchange of telephone numbers, I began texting her things that I wished my mother had said to me.
I will be her mother, I vowed. I will be the mother that I never had.
But that did not solve my need. You cannot make a nest with twigs you drop off at another’s. It has taken me almost six weeks now to realize this old truth. (Most birds typically learn to fly in three.)
If it is true that my twitter daughter had been pushed too soon, then I was the other sort of baby bird. What if mama bird never pushes? That is me. My mother nurtured in all the best wrong ways she knew, but she resisted nature’s call on my heart. She never wanted me to leave.
I am overweight from lack of flying practice, my wings bound within a nest I outgrew long ago. More than not knowing what I need, I do not even know what I want.
But she did. She knew exactly what she wanted. My twitter daughter did not merely throw a statement out into the universe. The tweet was not simply, I don’t *really* have a mom. Her tweet asked for something very specific.
And so while I hope to fatten her with cookies and pamper her with salon gift cards, I will not fail to do what a mother should. I will not fail to come when called. This is how I found myself signing on to zoom and listening to a bunch of speeches from strangers for two hours on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for her name to be called.
I went to her graduation because that is what she asked, that is what she believed a *real* mom would do.
In being there, I realized how much I wanted to fly. I thought of things I never dared to ask my mom. I saw a world that still answers those that ask. I drew a blueprint for my bigger nest.
Do you have a mother? If not then I’ve found that an adopted (twitter) daughter might be enough, more than enough. There are lots of us out there, both losing and finding ourselves every day. But most of all, reminding each other that we were meant to fly.
