The Mother-Child (Carter)

The Mother-Child

Gives birth to a child

Brings forth a gift

Begets the ever-begotten

Continues the lineage.

 

In the beginning a flutter

At the end, interminable determination

The release inevitable, but freedom optional

The child awakens, the mother-child is born.

 

No longer is the sky seen through a bamboo pipe.

It is revealed in all its glory and terror.

Separated at birth or practice-realization actualized?

Let me go, she wails!

 

When your child is born, you become a child

Vulnerable, fearing, grasping

Let my veins be your source again

No, the Mothers say: You have been initiated into birthinghood.

 

The stone child flies away to the great tree.

The mother-child knows.  

 

Dogen says to understand the meaning of gives birth to a child (his italics, or the translator’s). I have given birth many times, twice to physical babies, who arrived through my physical body, and many times through poems, most of which were birthed in two years of the last decade, which I then compiled and self-published in a poetic memoir. And, of course, over my long lifetime, there have been many other conceptions, gestations, and births that arise, abide and then cease. 

The meaning of gives birth to a child is at once completely understandable and a mystery. The understandable part is what I’ve described before as “riding the wave.” It happens and you cannot go back; you must experience Nature, the art of begetting. Children come from somewhere, an unexplainable and uncontrollable source that is such a mystery. 

The child-words tumble out onto my favorite medium, a blank, totally empty page of a special kind of notebook I found at Artisan’s that is actually an artist’s sketch pad. There can be no lines on the page, or I feel bound and nothing comes. I also have to use a pencil, not a pen, or nothing comes. There is such an exciting feeling of expectancy when faced with that blank page, as though it looks back at me, waiting to share the experience. When the poems first started, each came out whole with very little mess, and then I would finish it with few edits, a comma or two or fewer, on my laptop, always with the sweet Papyrus typeface that seems childlike and innocent to me. The titles are always an afterthought. It’s not unlike meditating…there is no intention, no plan, no judgment, no thought, no analysis, no angst. There is a vast, welcoming open space that seems to meet me right where I’m sitting. A phrase then comes to mind, and I allow myself to receive, a “receptive samadhi” Dogen mentions. What comes and from whom? I have no idea. 

In the early years of living this life “being good” at my work mattered, caring what others thought of my children (of all kinds) seemed important, and choosing what was “right” made a difference. In later years all those “requirements” fall away and the veil of “what is right” vanishes into what is beautiful (to me) in spite of anyone else’s opinions.

Having a physical child is different, but somehow the same. My beautiful, brown-eyed daughter tumbled out, very reluctantly, almost forty years ago now, but I remember it all, as though it was yesterday. The most terrifying part was not the actual birth, since I asked for all the drugs I could get! But, when you birth a human being you have carried, protected, and nourished, you realize she must fly away, sooner or later. There is no control, there is always change, and the mother wails the loss, knowing it must be, for that is the purpose of birthing, to bring forth a gift and to sacrifice your child to the world for its benefit (the child’s and the world’s). You feel intense pride in your “work” of bringing this child into the world, until you realize she had to come and it had very little to do with you. Once you lay the child on the altar of humanity, you first fear for her life, her survival, the ability to navigate well, and whether she will be happy. Then you remember your own childhood, the desperate need for independence and your own experiences without interference. 

Once you have your own child, you find yourself in between your own birth into living life as fully as possible and an intense and meaningful initiation into the lineage of birthing, an ancestral motherhood, a relationship to the turning wheel in which you have the great fortune of participating this lifetime. Some births are a one-in-a-lifetime thing, but most happen moment to moment in the precious act of birthing. Green mountains have many babies. 

 

Blogpost 4/27/21

(The beautiful “cathedral tree” image above, a tree within the forest within the tree, is the cover of my book, Dancing Between Worlds, which was birthed and gifted to me by Deanne Rachel Jameson, Santa Fe.)