Mother Knows Best

After reading the personal essay Take, Eat by Teresa Meyer Santiago I decided I should talk to my mom about her experience raising children.  She is one of the strongest, smartest women I know.  She minored in English at BYU and wrote for the local newspaper for ten years before she had me.  I guess I must have been quite a handful because she retired soon after her pregnancy.  She has been a stay at home mom ever since.  That has not stopped her from putting her literary skills to good use.  It would be quite embarrassing to number the times I have argued with my mom over my English homework which I thought was perfect, but had been unmercilously torn apart by her critical eye.  Her picture may very well be next to “Grammar Nazi” in the dictionary… I love her to death. 

I was unsure how she would react to this Take.  I knew she would be sympathetic to Santiago’s experience with a miscarriage since she had had one of her own.  She noted the indescribable sense of loss she felt after the whole ordeal.  She had not thought about it in a long time.  I could tell it was difficult for her to recall those sordid emotions.  They had been dealt with and buried.  She discussed them clearly and coherently, but it was obvious she had very little desire to dig them back up again.  It impressed upon me the tumultuous experience of motherhood.  Never had it registered so deeply the emotional rollercoaster a mother goes through as she bears a child.  A personal essay seems to have a more powerful effect at conveying thoughts and feelings than a work of fiction.  Combining that with my mom’s account made the literature extremely rewarding.