My mother taught me the basics of matriarchy: be a strong leader, keep your quarters for the laundromat, and teach your daughters everything you can.
Moms and safe spaces are sort of related concepts for most people, I think. We celebrate the eternal female in the pagan Oestre (check spelling) tradition and, as has been noted before, on Mother’s Day. Mothers are, according to modern tradition, meant to be loving, caring, patient and forgiving.
Thank Gaia, mine was. She was a lovely woman whom unfortunately I did not know for much of my growing up. When I linked back up with her at about 19, she told me I used to call her ‘monster mommy.’ I also, she said, as a tiny child had liked to tell her, ‘You no say me no.’ Sounds like I was the monster, doesn’t it? But I wasn’t. I was the youngest child of a very passionate couple, and I naturally picked up and based my own attitudes on their dynamic. And by the time I came along — the third daughter in three years when my father wanted sons — it’s fair to say their relationship had hit the skids.
But why would that lead to ‘monster mommy,’ and what does any of this have to do with safe spaces?
My definition of a safe space is one in which your needs are met, ideally it is possible for you to feel some pleasure, and the level of threat is low. Also, you have a voice and some autonomy.
A safe space can be as big as a National Park or a university — or at least so goes current thought — or as small as the cavity under a bed. Mothers, though, are human beings first. And humans can be unsafe at any speed, especially when they are under great pressure.
When my parents separated, my mother’s life went into the toilet. Dad was in college on the G.I. Bill, workig as a DJ at the college radio station and living large in a bachelor pad with his great pal John. Mom was left to deal with children alone, working as a waitress and living in a bare-bones apartment over a shop. She had a radio with big speakers — something dad replaced for himself with a nifty turntable — and a pink pro-style hairdryer with lots of little attachments. By then, that was about the sum total of her worldly wealth. She got, I think, $60 a month from him. She was stressed and busy, we were hungry and on the wild side.
Maybe you can see where this is going. Dad ended up with the kids, and embarked on serial marriages partly so he need not bother with der kinder too much. Mom went back into the Army, dropped off her kids’ radar, got married again, had two sons, and was diagnosed bipolar in her middle years.
Safe space. Income equality. Equal rights. Mutual respect. Fair play. Moms and dads.
