May 12, 2003

• Okay…

  
  

  so… I broke the “sacred motherhood” taboo.  I ragged on my mama, and was so crass as to do it on Mother’s Day, just because that’s the way things shook out, what with this being Mercury Retrograde and time to do my memoirs for a while, and Riott’s comment wondering why my step-father pulled a vanishing act, and all.

  
  

  Well, folks, just in case you haven’t noticed yet, I do tend to crap on all taboos.  I’m an equal-opportunity iconoclast, with something on tap in the old word mine to offend just about anyone.  And just because Mother’s Day is past, don’t start thinking I’m done blasting motherhood.

  
  

  It’s not sacred, y’know?  There was a time when men believed that motherhood was sacred, because they didn’t really know how babies were made.  Then, when they got hip to the fact that it takes two, and one of them has to be male, they flip-flopped the other way and thought that women were just the dirt in which they planted their seeds.  That made it really rough on mothers for a long, long time.

  
  

  Yo’mama and/or some man with an unhealthy Oedipal bent taught you that motherhood is sacred because their mamas taught them that.  The mama that started it all was scared of being old and helpless and not having those pesky kids that she’d worked so hard to bring into the world and keep here, to take care of her when she could no longer care for herself.  So, when I reflect on it, I think it was all really a typo in the first place:  not S.A.C.R.E.D, but S.C.A.R.E.D.

  
  

  The really scary thing, as far as mothers are concerned, is that the mating urge is hardwired in both sexes, but that nurturing urge that makes the vast majority of us go all gaga and googoo over any little big-headed, wide-eyed warm-blooded creature–and quite a few of the cold-blooded ones and invertebrates, too–that maternal instinct is reserved for the females of the species.  A nurturing man is a rare bird, indeed.  If you ever find one, find out how he got that way and set up a factory to produce more of them.

  
  

  As with cats and many other mammals, human females will sometimes be so strongly wired that way that they will even adopt and care for the young of other mothers, and some even go so far as to steal other women’s kids if they don’t have their own.  Even those with a lesser dose of the mothering hormones are usually geared toward protecting and preserving their own DNA, and will rear their grandchildren, the offspring of their siblings, their own younger orphaned siblings, etc.

  
  

  I have it on good authority that at least one male of this species finds this maternal instinct scary.  Any woman with two functioning brain cells to rub together ought to find a scary thought or two in there, too.  Just consider this:

  
  

  
  
  • Guys look and smell good.  Girls are predisposed not to try too hard to outrun one if he happens to notice her and give chase.
  
  
  • Once he gets his hands on her, if he’s not a hopelessly clumsy oaf, she’s a goner.  If he touches one of her hot buttons, she wants him to touch it some more–feels good.  If he stimulates that erogenous zone enough, not only does it open her up and lubricate her, but she’s paralyzed.  I’m not talking the intellectual and emotional paralysis of limerance here, but actual physical can’t-move-a-muscle paralysis akin to the sleep paralysis that keeps most of us from getting up and acting out our dreams.
  
  
  • I don’t need to describe and explain to anyone who has ever experienced it, the hormonal soup that takes over our bodies and minds once we’ve been impregnated and there’s no use trying to explain it to anyone who hasn’t experienced it.
  
  
  • Then, unless you’re lucky enough to be abnormal, which can carry a bunch of problems all in itself, when the baby is born (not an easy feat in itself, either) you LOVE that little sucker like you’ve never loved before.  Sometimes you love the kid so much that the daddy gets disgusted at the lack of attention and walks out on his little family.  Of course “mother love” isn’t really true unconditional love.  It’s compounded of biological imperatives and ego.  That’s your DNA you’re loving, and unless you are intelligent, educated, enlightened AND well-intentioned, you’re likely to warp the little suckers with your attempts to turn them into yourself and/or to achieve your abandoned ambitions vicariously through them.
  
  
  • Language and culture just complicate the whole mess by setting up rules and taboos and expectations, and using that problematic word, “love”, to label the lustful mating urge of the father, the protective nurturing urge of the mother, and the needy dependence of the offspring, as well as a few dozen other assorted crippling psychopathological states and several transcendent spiritual drives.  Scrap that word in favor of a variety of more descriptive terms, and the species would be better off… but I digress.

  
  

  Oh, well, I guess I’ve got enough of that out of my system for a while….

  
  

  I’ll be back later with the next installment of my memoirs, entitled:
  “Dammit, Toto, it looks like we’re still in Kansas.”

  • 1:36 pm
  • 9 Comments