I have often doubted that I was my mother's son. People joke around about me and bohemian lifestyles, hippies and open minds. I've commented on it myself. It's expected. But often I didn't see it, not the way it seemed to be meant.
Naomi would never have felt the call to protect and guide, to join in a comradery of warriors. And not because she's a woman and not just because she's inclined to a free flowing peace, versus a stable calming sense of structure; peacenik vs self aware pig.
She just wouldn't have felt the…stillness there.
Our lives together were all about her finding the stillness. I often wondered why she was searching. She seemed to carry it with her. A reservoir of poise and calm and knowing…
A light.
I was the one flagging behind, too twitchy for gurus, too hyper for teachers, too talkative for therapists. I was the one that didn't seem to fit into her world.
My whole childhood felt like I was two steps behind this ethereal beauty. This changeling creature who created whirlwinds but was never part of them. I watched her sweep into people's lives, help them find their centers, somehow bump them on the right path and move on again; all with grace.
I envied her so much. The power she seemed to have and use so effortlessly.
I had my gender identity crisis at a pretty early age; binding up my penis and wearing skirts and wanting to be a girl, because I thought that femininity somehow gave my mother a key to life.
But then I started to realize she didn't know she had it. And it confused me. What was I seeing? What wasn't she?
Curious, I started looking at the rest of the world, hoping to spot it somewhere else, or at least find the words to say 'Mommy, here it is. Right here. Look."
I guess I never stopped looking; trying to find the words in the languages of all the places we went to; in their history, in their culture; in things lost in time.
And eventually the looking became who I was. The reason for it was still there, but the looking pulled me. There was so much to see and share, to evaluate and try to understand. The world was just beautiful; Too beautiful to have so much of it buried, forgotten or misunderstood.
The questions still built of course. At night; in tents in upstate New York, beside green tropical rivers on the Pampas, in cheap Mexican and Peruvian hostels and even in my dorm during my undergraduate summers; I wondered if anyone had ever told her she'd already found it. I wondered if it was just that she didn't believe it. Or if there was more to seeking than I could ever understand. I searched mythology and theology, folklore and rumor.
I found Sentinels.
Stillness took on a whole new meaning; Of light. And sound. And touch and taste.
I had a whole new language.
And then one day I found a Sentinel and I had a whole new world.
It's not that I haven't forgiven Naomi for what she did, with my dissertation, my life, Jim's life. She meant well. She made a mistake. She feels sorrow and regret, of course I forgive her.
It just means that I know now I can never go 'Look, Mom.'
It's not that I haven't had years to know my mother's not perfect. I have. It's not that I haven't put adult words to her behavior; unreliable, fickle, unavailable. I have. And I hated myself for accepting those terms. But the bitterness of them grew less and less, eventually.
It's just a matter of worth. Worth and acceptance and a touch of psychology 204.
Naomi's never accepted her own worth. Not completely. But she did her best to instill a strong sense of self in me. So I thank her for that, and I forgive, what to other people seems if not unforgivable, certainly grudge worthy.
It takes courage to step into the whirlwind. To be a part of the chaos you create. To get your hands dirty. You can't observe a culture and not get in the bushes with them, eat what they eat, live how they live. Anthropologists don't live behind desks in clean white offices.
Or maybe I'm not an anthropologist. Maybe I'm a humanitarian historian. Maybe what I see as practical my peers would call 'going native'. Maybe my mother's the better anthropologist, because she never gets dirty.
Not on purpose. And if she does, she gets clean again as soon as she can.
Like with my dissertation and my entry in the academy and my fight with the university so that I could start my new life with a doctorate degree.
I realized, when I finally held my degree in one hand, and my badge in the other, that my mother must have used up all her outward sense of courage and sense of self in deciding to bring me into this world; and in keeping me to love and rear as her own; on her own. I realized that my childhood was all about her trying to regain what she thought she'd lost, while trying to give me other role models, stronger role models.
I realized, that she thought she'd given me the push that she was incapable of taking for herself. The push into the spotlight, onto the top; forcing me to recognize and deal with the success of who I am.
Thank God for my strong sense of self, or I'd have never recovered.
The letter in my hand was worn and smudged; stamped from Bali. Jim could probably tell me if it still smelled of jungle air, tropical pollen and exotic spices. But I didn't ask. I've forgiven Naomi. He hasn't. Not yet. Not completely.
Inside the envelope was a picture of a structure so covered in growth and flora I could barely recognize it as a family temple. But even if I hadn't, the second picture of Naomi laughing into the camera surrounded by old family friends was enough to tell me where she was. On a short slip of paper, my mother's trademark breezy cursive sent her love and the knowledge that old friends we'd made back when I was four and we were visiting Bali, had asked about me. There was a festival coming up and they had all promised to spend an hour of vigil in blessings for my continued good health.
I couldn't help smiling at her attempt at being subtle.
I did remember the family, however. They'd taken us in when my mother, young and carrying a sick four year old, had stumbled into their village looking for enlightenment and a good doctor. Wayan and Putu, simple, kind people who sent their children rushing into the sun to find the western doctor catering to their village and who helped my mother set me down and soothe me with water.
My first days there were a blur of teas, tablets and uncomfortable sleeping. But eventually I'd gotten better. And then we'd each celebrated my good health in completely different ways. Naomi had sat under the bamboo thatch awning of the very same temple in the photo. She'd knelt on her prayer-mat, an elegant picture of supplication in gauzy deep red cotton; oblivious to the gentle breeze and dancing sun motes. Soaked in the curling incense and sense of utter calm, she gave thanks.
I'd been the opposite of her perfect stillness; running around and around the warm stone courtyard, with it's single Bougainvillea tree, in frenzied delight; chasing dragonflies and butterflies and just enjoying the sound of my feet on the cobblestones and the breath in my lungs.
"Ellison, Sandburg. My office, now."
The summons shook me back into the present. I flicked the card onto my desk where it skewed across the surface as I stood to follow Jim into the captain's office. I'd write her back later. It'll be light hearted and brief. I'm no longer trying to get her to understand. I'm just glad I do.
I can remember Naomi saying once; 'What could be better than having the entire world as a classroom.'
Looking across at Jim listening intently to our briefing, I wish I could tell her it's knowing your place in it.
The End