Not A Good Mother

The vivid detail of a nightmare, upon waking, feeling the panic in your body. The nightmare is is a firm memory rather than a nocturnal dip into another world. When you wake up while actively having a panic attack — your breathing is shallow and shaky and your voice (somehow you’re also making sounds) might also be gutteral, screaming and crying, but you can’t hear so you don’t know how loud you might actually be.

Your ears are ringing.

You might know that feeling.

She was once telling me a story about how she had a nightmare, where an earthquake was happening and a building was collapsing. Or perhaps the bus she was passenger on was being crushed, and rubble was coming in through the broken windows on both sides.

Recollecting the details from time asleep, even when those details are as real as your body and your bed, is like chasing the wind. Still feeling the goosebumps from the breeze of dreams, we try to reach out and grab hold of the wisps.

Her young daughter was beside her in the dream.

She began sharing the maternal/parental sacrifice tale-as-old-as-time; she curled her body around her daughter to shield the little one from the imminent crush from stone and steel. As if, just as we hope for in a pregnancy, the body of the carrier would be enough to stop any harm to the child.

She looked at me with pleading eyes at this place of the story, pausing as though it was my turn to talk, to praise her for Being A Good Mother. I didn’t. I waited for the story to continue. We stared at one another.

That was the end — her imploring eyes, the punctuation.

In a mechanical sense, this person fulfills the role of a parent. She mothers. She does not, however, very much like this daughter. There was a subtext of disdain for this particular child that I never could explain. But it was no secret; it was as real as a feeling gets, which is to say, very real. And whether this is an opinion or an observation of behavior, it is not something you bring up.

I cannot say that she was A Good Mother when I knew her. I suppose what she was seeking was reassurance and acknowledgement, but with such an open end to a conversation, I’m not sure what anyone would or should say.

And what would my opinion have mattered to her, if she believed herself truly to be A Good Mother?

Could it be that her nightmare was a relief?

A release?

Or a reckoning?

You might know that feeling.