Reflections

I wasn’t going to acknowledge Mother’s Day, certainly not publicly, until I started seeing various tweets go by.  It struck me just how difficult a day it can be for a lot of people.  There’s an additional poignancy for me in that tomorrow would have been her birthday, too.

It’s not that I’ve ignored this sort of remembrance, only that there’s always been a certain stoicism about it all.

Today I reflected on that stoicism.  I’ve always known for the longest time this was the conditioned male response to life and its events.  Certainly it was a conditioning she played a huge role in creating.  If stoicism and warping reality with force of mind were Olympic sports she’d have won gold every time.  She expected me to turn out the same, because that was her perception of decent and appropriate male behaviour.

The new thought I had today was, how would she have coped with the emergence of melody ?  I’m not sure why it’s taken so long to ask that question in earnest, perhaps an indication of the emotional distance she maintained.

I can see two possible answers.  Either there would have been intense disapproval and the application of reality warping to excise the abomination from her world.  Indeed, when I’ve lightly thought about this before, this has been the conclusion.

Now I’m far less sure.

My own memories of feminine thoughts, wanting to play the feminine role go back at least to when I was 5 or 6 years old.  As the only child, she might get roped into that innocent fantasy childhood play.  Despite hiding it as I grew up, there were incidents of experimenting with the feminine that I know she didn’t miss all of them.

Which means, she knew there was a female aspect about me, though she chose not to help to promote it – well, one certainly didn’t in those days.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking but my conclusion now that melody is mostly the primary is that she probably would not have been surprised to see melody.  How supportive she’d be is another thing, but in knowing she wouldn’t have been surprised, I think there would have been tolerance, perhaps even curiosity.  Beyond that, I don’t know.

You might say this is pointless navel gazing, and yet I think I understand her better and whilst he’s still stoical about the whole thing, melody is more nuanced about missing someone whom she never knew and who never knew her.

And whilst the word ‘love’ was taboo, I am finally coming to realise this quote is true.