It's Momplicated

I understand you; I feel you;I hear  Life  leaves a wound in the heart no one can heal, pain of a caged womanhood leaves a memory no one can steal. Mama, I finally see this, I understand now. Now that I am a fully blossomed woman. I now understand that life and how you lived it as a woman was so ingrained in your every memory, so carved into the fabric of who you were. It wasn't easy , thanks to the generational gap and paradigm shift in mindset, but mama,   I tried and tried, until I saw what you must have seen. I now acknowledge the many pebbles that hindered your movement.

Mama, now that I understand you. I am learning to forgive you.  I am learning to let go of the pain and the hurt. I am learning to scrap away the layers of betrayal that are mashed around my chest. Mama, I am learning  that I judged you so harshly.   I know you only passed on to me what your mother did to you. How could I have judged you so harshly when you only gave me as much love as you had for yourself. When you taught me to love my body as far as you loved yours. How else could you have taught me to carry the scars life would inflict on me as a woman , when your whole life was a massacre on your womanhood?

. However, I want you to know that the child  in me will take a minute to catch up with this logical part of my reasoning. I am  still hurting in my healing. Hurting for the home that never was. The childhood I needed and never got. My memory of home is not safe. I think of it as a place where I first met my abuser. Every time  I think about home , I feel like I’ve torn open some stitches overnight. Everything inside is raw as if I’ve bruised an emotional organ. Home was not a place I went to find peace , it's the place my chaos was fueled. It will take a minute to drown all that trauma.

Do you remember our conversation about Uncle Frank? Do you remember how you told me it was all a joke? You told me that I should not start such rumors.  Especially since uncle Frank paid my school fees. I understand now that acknowledging that the people you trusted me with were preying on me must have been hard for you.  Who would believe you? Who would have been on your side ? Who would have helped with my school fees ? How would it have reflected on the family? I understand that it wasn't a black and white situation for you . However, I do wish you had believed me though. I wish you had hugged me instead of dismissing my fears and invalidating my concerns. I wish you would have taken time to be there for me . I needed you .You only affirmed dads’ cold glance when our eyes met as Uncle Frank touched my butt and commented about how big my boobs were. I know dad heard him. I know he kept quiet. It hurt me that he didn't fight for my honor. But it broke me that you stood and watched.

The first time I said No to you, I read the tension and in the room. I know that my malleability and agreeableness are my most likable quality. I know how strange my retaliation sounded. Mother, I was not rebelling. I was asserting my choice and my voice.  Mother, you did not fail in raising a respectful daughter. I respect you all right, but I will not go to uncle frank. I will not live looking over my shoulder always anxious of what will/could happen. I know it is hard for you to understand how I dare be assertive and bite the hand that feeds me. But mother, why be fed and spend years broken because uncle Frank could use a little “help” around the house?

All those holidays I was between relative houses, I lived in fear of the worst. I always questioned if my dress was too revealing. I wondered if I was appropriate enough to be around the man of the house.  You see all those places you told me were safe, mama, they were not. But how could I tell you that your brother asked me if I had become a “real “woman yet? How could I tell you that he offered to show me what it meant to be a woman? Admitting to these injustices happening to your daughter would mean admitting that they had happened to you too. I understand why you shushed me. It was like looking at a ghastly image in the mirror.

I remember your many lessons about marriage and courtship . Keinano kia ngahikaa ngateo. The courtship process was just an appeal. You told me that I will not meet the same man in marriage. That he will change because he had already ensnared me. I felt trapped by this narrative and my heart breaks for every woman conditioned by it. I know its what your grandmother told you , and her grandmother before her .

I desire better for myself mother . I do not want to live in constant fear of being disarded as soon as my husband did not need me. Mother, I heard your voice shake when you asked dad for money for bills. When the groceries were running out and it was far between his next paycheck. I have not forgotten the condescending tone father used to ask you where you took “all the money he gave you “. With a household of eight, factoring in inflation and daily expenses, I wondered what money he was talking about. I understand you mother. What else could you have done? You tell me that your education was halted so that Uncle Frank could proceed to university because your father thought he was the “brighter “and promising one.

Why educate you when you will just marry and go benefit the other family?

That is why slap after slap, punch after punch, mother you still stayed. You say you did it for us . That we may know there is violence in marriage. But mother, that is not what we learned. We are scared in ways more than one. We endured a high-functioning dysfunctional home. You set the precedence for what strength and endurance in a  woman looks like. I know you think I will shame you because you will never get to call “iruga”. Mama, my lesson wasn't that there is violence in marriage, it was that I should avoid violence in my marriage. Sometimes I wonder what my view on life would be if only Daddy didn't dim your light with every blow and kick.

Now your son desires wives like you were to father. Someone who will devote all her life to the family and the children. Someone who works tirelessly and does not say much. He believes it is a woman's responsibility to appease her husband when he is mad. She should always ensure food is ready and always keep the home clean. I remember his look when I told him he could use a laundry service to do his cleaning. One does not need a wife for that. Humor me, but someone needs to explain to me what is with this “wife “ narrative that we are sold from childhood. I respect the admirable qualities that my mother has.  But I am afraid that my brother has been looped into the power play of your dysfunctional marriage.

I know you gave a reduced version of yourself in your capacity as a mother, a s a wife. I felt sad for you sometimes. It must have been lonely waiting for your husband in the wee hours of the night, not knowing if he would will return safely. My heart shattered every time you defended him

“your father is a good man. He provides for us and he shielded me from the shame of singlehood. Don’t you know that a husband is a husband ,regardless?. You take him as he is and you nurture him well. You hide his filth and protect his ego and masculinity. Men are very proud and they do not wish for their business to be in the public square “

Mother, your lessons of what a man should and should not do have been many. I have everything around my neck , but mother, I refuse to wallow in this sadness we have called cultures. This narration has brought me to this next part . To share with you why I have to forgive you.

In my belly grows a child. You remember Garry, the man from the lake you said I should never bring home? Mother, he turned out just fine. He has loved me in my wholeness and we did a civil wedding. Maybe I will bring forth a daughter. If I do , I want the burden of womanhood to end with me ,with us .If it is a girl, I would teach her that being a woman is more than pans and pots .If it is a boy, I will teach him to be human before he is a man.