Lock up your daughters...

I will be writing something... Personal, shall we say, in the next week.

Bobbing for memories of mom

It's Mother's Day and appropriately I've been thinking about my mom. I heard the clamor of Caribou's Bowls and was as usual plunged into confusion, my gossamer-delicate grip on the present instantly dissolved and I became submerged in contemplation of my briney origins. I was with spoon and bowl, incessantly raining blows upon the half orb, and if I'm not mistaken both my hammer and correspondent anvil were coated in a sweet paste-like substance. Yes, now I remember, it was mom's doing, a batch of chocolate chip cookies were soon to be birthed from the oven, and I was biding my time exploring the mixing bowl's sonorous potential. I'm not exactly certain this memory corresponds to an exact experience, but I can assure you, one and all, that it is probable that I have once or twice hit a bowl with a spoon. Perhaps you too have had this opportunity? Moms the world over are well-known for demanding that their children at least help to get rid of the remaining cookie dough. Here I do not wish to place too hard an emphasis on "cookie" because I can only imagine the undocumented variety of sweets mothers everywhere make for their children. And doesn't it soon follow that the banging of bowls by means of spoons is a human universal?

In any case, the minute universe of my toddlerhood was well acquainted with mom's baking, and I would with skill and painstaking diligence clean the bowl and spoon the best I could. Like a greedy fledgling I elbowed my siblings away but alas, mom was always there to ensure an environment of sustainable equanimity. Perhaps I did indeed whack a bowl or two, a whacking for the ages perhaps not (perhaps ageless bowl whacking must be left to the caribous) but at least it can't be said that e. herzen never once met wood to glass. Ah yes, these wisps of personal antiquity, cored deep and essential to one's life, yet somehow off limits other than as glimpses of echoes of shadows. These thoughts about mom's cookie preparations and bowl whacking stayed with me all day, fitting given that it was basically her day. But what wonder and coincidence was this?! Was that a mother walrus I saw, bobbing gently in the arctic seas, her newborn cub cupped in her enormous frond-like flippers? Yes it was. I watched as she cradled him like my mom used to do in the pool with me. My memory of this is also one of those wisps of glimpses or whatever, but this time the outlines are stronger and I'm certain that I was cupped like a walrus cub by my mother. It's as clear to me as the ringing of bowls or the fact that a pool is really just a large bowl, a bowl big enough for walruses to swim in.

All of this chatter about spoons and bowls, gently cupped and bobbing walrus babies, and me and my mom has me thinking about origins. My origins are ultimately in my mother, and not just in the walrusian, which is to say mammalian way, but also in her kindness and patience, her sensitivity and concern, and her unrelenting encouragement - "go on, hit the bowl erasmus" - "please son, I want you to hit it" - "no really, there's nothing preventing you from hitting it" - "the spoon was designed with only bowl drumming in view." Life can be tough, at times it really is a large quantity of bodily evacuations, but it's also filled with warm cookies and safe and sound baby walruses. I will remember these things because of you mom.