Wayfinding
It’s been a year since I’ve written here. How fitting that it’s mother’s day again as I sit down to write, mostly because I’m alone and have the time. I travel up to Sundance every year on mother’s day weekend to take a retreat away from the world. I have a complicated relationship with the weekend that we set aside to honor mothers and mothering. My birth mother gave custody of me when I was 2, and my grandmother, who raised me from then until I was almost 7 years old, was a complex woman who I loved very much, but neglected my brothers and I. When I hear the stories my father tells about Grandma beating him or treating him horrendously, my love for her wanes and I realize that I didn’t know her that well. I was then adopted by a woman that I am now completely estranged. Our relationship was difficult from the time I was a child and I no longer call her mother at all.
Despite all of this, I have always wanted to be a mother and at times I have been asked if becoming a mother has helped to heal my heart. In some ways it has. But being a mother is much more difficult than I imagined it to be. Having a child was like following the points on a map. I went to college, met the love of my life, married, and five years later got pregnant. Our life maps are made by our culture, society, family, beliefs, etc…, and I was following mine.
The day I had my oldest daughter an entirely new section of map was created. I had a lot of love in my heart and a boulder of my own expectations on my shoulders as I set off on the path marked: being the perfect mother. Somewhere between working full-time and getting bitten by my 2-year-old on a daily basis, my doubts surfaced and I wondered if I could really do this. When I was pregnant I made a list of the things I would never do as a parent. Amazingly, getting angry at my children was on that list. How someone with anger issues could even write that on a list is beyond me. I had good intentions, but I had done what we all do at some point: I had forgotten that the map is not the territory.
“The map is not the territory,” is a thinking model that serves to remind us (and warn us really) of the difference between what we thought something would be and what it actually is. Our expectations for something, versus the difficult and sometimes back-breaking reality. Maps serve as a guide to show us which direction to travel as time progresses in our lives. They simplify what is ahead, making it easy to see the big picture. However, it’s crucial that we understand that maps are merely representations and not the actual terrain itself. Realizing this helps us face what is ahead, as well as helps us to be more empathetic as we see what terrain others are going through.
I’m backpacking the last 110 miles of the John Muir trail late in the summer, with the last 40 miles or so being spent in the backcountry of Yosemite National Park. Yosemite has hundreds of possible trails I can take with one through beautiful Tuolumne meadows with its rolling streams and wildflowers and another up the side of Half Dome with cables placed in the granite because the grade is so steep that it’s too treacherous to hike without the help. As I figure out the amount of miles that I can backpack in a day, I have to take into consideration the elevation gain, potential stream crossings, quality of the path itself, obstacles, and potential places to camp along the trail - none of which are shown on the map.
Mothering is like this and more than this. It reminds me of wayfinding. It’s much more than a map and terrain, it’s also a compass and stars and directional pull. I told my oldest daughter who recently got married that being a mother is great. And terrible. Wonderful. And absolutely awful. It’s jaunts through beautiful forests with the sun coming through the trees, and it’s gritting your teeth on a hard granite path pulling your way to make it to the top of a mountain, when it starts to rain. It’s picking your way through a muddy swamp that’s nowhere on the map and facing a raging river and needing to become an expert on bridge building. What a journey!
On mother’s day, I look over my map with wonder and awe at far I have come. Look at the trails I have traversed! I cry and then pat myself on the back. You’re doing okay mama. Being a mother is not what I thought it would be. The map could never convey this terrain. And I didn’t find being a perfect mother in baked cookies or elementary school parties or fantastical Christmas presents. I found it unconditional love. It’s the only perfect thing I have to offer, my charity, and it’s the only thing that never fails. This fall, a new part of the map will begin to appear: having all adult children, when my youngest turns 18. I will get out my old trusty compass and lay out the map again. I will glance at the position of the stars and listen to the wind. And then I’ll pick up my pack and travel on.
The cables up half dome!
