The Jewish year 5781 comes to an end. This month of Elul is as always a time of reflection cherished by us. We have the hopeful conviction that it is the time when God, like a Majesty, comes down to walk in the fields and is closer than ever to us people. I would like to tell God that I am working through a kind of mourning. A few days ago I phoned my mother to wish her a happy birthday, but she chose not to speak to me. Perhaps because of what I narrate to them about me in the family background.
I admit my failure to maintain a relationship with my sister that would allow me to have a sustainable relationship now with my mother. I protested the oppression of not being seen or heard by my siblings, and the injustice of the way they are managing my mother. I believed that all the time in the past when I supported and listened to them, we had built something.
My mother and I have had a very close relationship since I was born. I think she felt me as a part of herself, literally. Mama has always been fluctuating in her choices, in her self-esteem, in her communication: a continuous and rapid alternation between the courage of expressing her enthusiastic, creative, original nature, free from constraints, and adhering to rigid models, guided by conventions to the point of sometimes risking insensitivity and incommunicability. Influenced by being considered an extension of her, I think I have projected this dualism into my life, for example in my tendency to consider social relationships in conflict with a sincere artistic expression.
It is probably because of this non-choice, not defending and rooting herself in one or another model of being a woman and a mother, that she, who has an innate, generous instinctual and vital force, has never addressed to us children, gathered together to listen, a critical appreciation of our respective strengths and weaknesses and of our role that each of the three should therefore recognise in the other. She should have, but she kept it only in her heart.
In spite of her beautiful qualities, or thanks to them, like so many people - especially coming from dysfunctional families - from a young age my mother should have sought healing of her traumas, cultivate what I would describe with the Jewish concept of two notes in each of a person's pockets, one saying that the world was created for them and the other warning that they are but a speck of dust in the universe.
This is how I see it: it is not important how long it will take us, or if we are already parents ourselves, the important thing is to start, as soon as life presents us with an important challenge, to learn that self-respect cannot be separated from respect for the other; that self-esteem is both the source and the consequence of humility; that material self-reliance, for a creative mind, comes from emotional self-reliance; above all, that suffering is not a doom but an opportunity for change.
In my journey growing up, as I tried to develop these values, I loved my mother and we also had many fights: I was aiming at the idea that if and when the time came that she would need us, I would have the appropriate ways. Perhaps my recent protest was out of time, or better yet, instead of protesting I should have ignored the provocations and impositions and acted according to my own logic.
I am sad not to see or hear from mama currently, I am happy that in recent times we have always spoken with tenderness and gratitude, and my memory is sweet. I know that the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to hear and see each other, especially as her cognitive capacity regresses.
I pray to God that I will be able to assert myself again, according to my values. Not to be a problem for mama. This is my way of honouring and respecting my parents.