To My Imaginary Daughter

By Lisabet Sarai



Dear Anne,

Today is Mother's Day, as well as my own mother's birthday. She would have been eighty three today, if she hadn't died of leukemia at age fifty two. Our relationship had its difficulties (what mother-daughter relationship doesn't?), but I do miss her, more than thirty years later. I wish she could have lived to see her kids settled and more or less successful, at least partially as the result of her diligent and principled parenting. I suspect she would have been proud. I wish I could call her and wish her a happy day, send her a card or a gift.

As for me, I guess I'll never be a mother, except in my imagination. Your birth is the closest I'll ever get.

I created you perhaps two decades ago, in a fantasy story I wrote for your father. The tale was rather archly entitled "Labor of Love". It turned on the notion that suffering through the agonies of giving birth could be another act of devoted submission, akin to enduring the whip or the cane.

When your father and I were together, I never dreamed he wanted children (or marriage for that matter). I thought our connection, intense as it was, was mostly about sex. I believed that he was still in love with his former flame, your namesake. Only later, after we'd parted (though never definitively), after I'd married someone else, did I learn how much he desired a legacy, how much he regretted being the last shoot in his family tree. I started to play with the thought of my bearing him a child. What would it be like, if we were a long term couple? What would you be like?

Intelligent, obviously. I'm smart and he's practically a genius. Highly sexed, most likely, and probably very verbal. Aside from that, you're hard to visualize. What would be the result of our melding our disparate genetics? Would you be tall like him, or tiny like me? Would your hair be straight or curly, black or blonde? I suppose at this point, I could choose, couldn't I?

I wonder if he remembers you.

I'll be honest; I was always ambivalent about having kids. My own mom was so over-protective. I worried that I'd continue her neuroses. Heck, I nearly have heart attacks watching other people's children do dangerous things! If I had a daughter of my own, I might never let her out of my sight.

Still - I find children fascinating, partly because I recall the wonders of my own childhood so vividly. I could relive those magic times with my child. I think I'd know how to raise a daughter (though a son would be totally baffling). With my help, she'd grow up believing in herself, open to the world, eager to try new things. She'd know how to enjoy her own sexuality while still acting responsibly. I think about all the milestones: her first words, her first steps, her first day of school, her first period, her first kiss.

I never went through those things with you, but I can imagine them.

I like to think that you do actually exist, in some other strand of reality. If your father and I had done as good a job communicating out of bed as we did in it, you might have been the result. Perhaps that happened in some parallel world, created by different choices. By this time, you've graduated college. Perhaps you're in grad school, or even well launched in your career. Perhaps you're married yourself, with children of your own.

I never would have guessed it then, but I know now your dad would love being a grandfather.

You showed up recently, in a story I wrote called "Like Riding a Bicycle", which will be published in an anthology about kinky couples later this year. The story was a thought experiment. If your father and I had married, would we still be engaged in D/s, decades later? If not, what would it take to start again? Of course, the characters aren't really me and your dad. They never are. But the germ of that story, like so many of my tales, lies in the mysterious heart of the connection he and I shared. Anyway, the narrator (the male of the couple) mentions the disruptive effect of children on his kinky relationship with his spouse. He refers to you by name.

Anne.

It's fun to picture you coming to visit me - to visit us - on Mother's Day, perhaps with your lover, husband or children in tow. I'd cook dinner, because that's what I like to do, and we'd sit around the table afterward, drinking wine and reminiscing about your past, and perhaps mine. Your dad would be playing with your kids, I suspect. You wouldn't go home till late, because we enjoyed each other's company so much. And later still, in bed, your father and I would compliment each other on how well you turned out.

Wherever you are, I hope that your world has given you the gifts you deserve. I hope you'll forgive me, too, for not having the insight or the courage to bring you physically into my world. We can't change the past, and I don't know if I would do so, even if it were possible. I do somewhat regret, though, denying you the chance to exist.

On Mother's Day, I hope you'll think kindly of your poor, confused old mom.

Love,
Lisabet

With all my love ...

A mother's love is not biological.

There are numerous cases out there of people whose mother birthed them, and really, her involvement should have stopped there. On the flipside though, there are also those women that, which they didn't bring the child into the world, offered them the unconditional love that is in their hearts.

I have no doubt that my mother loves me. Unfortunately, she was undiagnosed bi-polar for decades, and had a hard time showing her love. To this day, we still can't be in a room together without me getting pissed off or her shutting down. Most of the time, both happens.

Yet I know she does love me. We are just toxic together.

My mother-in-law accepted me, doing everything she could for me, offering me all the love I could ask for. I knew, for what time we had, that she loved me. Even when she had a hard time telling me so. As I am sure you know from my post on April 9th, I feel her loss every day.

I've had teachers that have taken me under their wings, sheltering me, offering all their support and assistance, and not asking for anything in return. In their own ways, they were short-term mothers (and fathers) to me.

I can also see that as I grow older, I am coming to be seen in a "mother's light" by more than just my daughter.

Being a mother isn't always a matter of biology. And I have to say, I am thankful for that. Had it been, I would have missed out on so much love ... support ... and acceptance.

I think on Mother's Day it is just as important to show our love to those surrogate mothers as much as it is for our real mothers.

To all the mothers out there, be it blood or not, I hope you know how much you are appreciated.

Keep up the love ...

A Tale of Three Moms

It's hard for me to write dispassionately about 'Motherhood' or try to be creative with the topic at this point in my life, so instead, I'll retell a story about what was foremost in my mind this Mother's Day and explain why it is a sobering topic for me.

Around the holidays, a year and a half ago, Mom was literally fighting for her life... and hanging on by a thread. She had been diagnosed with leukemia in May, fought a losing battle with chemotherapy over the summer, and nothing was helping to stem the advance of the cancer in her blood and bone marrow. With the classification that she fell into, her prognosis at the time of diagnosis was well short of six months.

Then a miracle happened...her doctor was able to convince the insurance company to approve a bone marrow transplant despite her age at the time (63) being beyond their normal range. That was followed closely by a second miracle...she didn't have to wait for a donor match. Her own brother, who lived 4 miles away from her and was still in good health at 65, tested to be a perfect match for donation. Sibling donations have the highest success rate, and we crossed our fingers that Mom could hold out long enough to stabilize for and undergo the god-awful pre-procedure chemo and radiation.

So just before Thanksgiving the year before last, she was given the transplant, and we waited while her body fought both the cancer and the 'invading' new bone marrow cells. That Thanksgiving holiday was filled with worry and hope.

As December began, she started slipping away. Her counts were proceeding 'normally', but she was becoming delirious and eventually unresponsive. An unexpected allergic reaction to her anti-rejection medication sent her into a coma due to fluid buildup in the brain called PRES syndrome. 1700 miles away, I could only wait for news. She was moved to intensive care and the second week of December I received a call needing permission to place her on a ventilator as a respiratory infection set in.

At that point I could wait no longer, and scheduled my flight to South Dakota. I hadn't seen her since August, and barely recognised her; her hair was gone, she was 30 pounds lighter, and she was hooked up to every piece of medical support equipment you can imagine. I walked into her empty house alone that night and the utter silence was the strangest sensation, looming as an omen, as if she was already gone.

They showed me the MRI's of her brain, dark and while areas everywhere...awful looking to even my untutored eye. They started talking about comfort measures and it was universally assumed that she would never go home again, even if she survived, which was looking less and less likely.


I sat by her bed for nearly a week with no response. I'd had the childishly hopeful but irrational thought that once I was there, she'd hear my voice and magically open her eyes, but that only happens in fiction I suppose. I lotioned her feet, tried in vain to keep her bloody tears from drying on, and tried to talk. It was hard to know what to say to someone not speaking back or giving any sign of life---again where the movies and fiction have it wrong. Her hand was warm but dead in mine.

During this time, her only movements were occasional gagging motions, and I asked, begged, pleaded, and finally flat-out demanded they remove the breathing tube. Their response was that she'd met every protocol except one; she had to be responsive before removal.

I was stymied by ICU staff and resp therapists at every turn until one day I finally spoke to the Pulminologist on the phone and reminded him that she's been unresponsive for days before insertion. After securing my permission to reinsert if she went south, he approved the removal, much to the dismay of the resp therapist who'd smugly handed me the phone in the first place, sure that the doc would support her instead of me.

She and the ICU nurse went through the shut-down and pulling of the tube. It was awful watching my mom's body fighting and gagging. But it was finally out.

Then her eyes opened...

After nearly three weeks in a coma, when that tube came out, she just...woke up. The nurse asked if she knew who I was, and she said in a raspy, but clearly disgusted voice, "Of course! That's my daughter." Oh, that's my mama. Give 'em hell, Mom. Later she confessed that she hadn't been able to remember my first name for the first week, which bothered and discouraged her more than anything else.

While she'd been laying there, her body had been accepting the transplant. They moved her back up to oncology the next morning (that was a jolt, coming into her ICU bay and having it be empty!), and I flew home the day after, on Christmas Eve, to be with my girls for the holiday. I was loathe to leave, but I had my own mothering to do.

Only two weeks later, she went home after a total of two months in the hospital. Her mom, my grandma, who was 87, moved out to the farm to spend the rest of the SD winter with her and take care of her 'little girl' during her recovery.

Being a mom doesn't stop, apparently, once your baby is grown. Even when they're in the their sixties and have kids and grandkids of their own.

This Mother's Day, she is 100% donor cells and cancer-free. Her vision is still somewhat affected, probably from the radiation or possibly the PRES, so she can't read like she used to ...a huge blow for the person I inherited my bookishness from. But her hair is finally growing out. And she is back driving again and doing for herself.

Moreover, she's still herself, still Mom, still Mimi to my two girls and my brother's new baby boy we didn't think she'd live to meet (here she is pictured below with my brother and his son, on his first birthday just last month). I had almost, almost given up hope of her still being...her during my vigil last winter.

This Mother's Day, I have the pleasure of planning a trip for her to come visit us here in Oregon this June. It's been three years, and for most of that time I thought she'd never be able to make the trip again. But through what I believe is sheer willpower and stubborness, she is ignoring any lingering souveniers of her battle and actually living her life. We'd had every reason to expect that she could be gone by now, but a few miracles later I have something very real and concrete to be thankful for...my mom's future and all our Mother's Days yet to come.

All About My Mother

By Lisabet Sarai

Today, May 9^th, is Mother's Day. Yesterday was the seventy eighth anniversary of my own mother's birth. The juxtaposition started me thinking about my mom—her strengths and her weaknesses, and how they've influenced me.

Mom died nearly three decades ago after an ugly two-year battle with leukemia . She was younger than I am now. Her death was a genuine tragedy, cutting her life short just as she was finally getting it together. After years of bitterness and anguish, seeking for meaning in gurus, art, politics, sex and the bottom of a bottle, she had succeeded in finding her spiritual center. She felt cherished and protected by her God and her church community, at home at last. To have that comfort and security snatched away—well, it hardly seems fair after all that she endured in order to achieve it. On the other hand, her faith made her last months and days easier to bear. It gave her the courage to let go at the end.

My mom was a multi-talented superstar. She excelled at anything she attempted. She got straight A's through high school, college and graduate school. She drew, painted, sculpted in clay and marble. She could sing like an angel and dance like the devil—jitterbug, rock and roll or the danse de ventre. She earned a life saving certificate. She refinished furniture. She knitted sweaters that made L.L. Bean look cheap and crocheted an afghan for each of our beds in the colors we requested. She created Halloween costumes that were the envy of the neighborhood. She could whip up a sumptuous meal from pretty much any ingredients that happened to be in the refrigerator.

She was articulate and compassionate, a champion for the underdog and a lifelong feminist. She demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, with her three kids in tow. She even ran for a position in the state legislature in order to fight for peace and justice.

Mom had a figure like Marilyn Monroe, all curves. (The drawing above is one of her works that I've salvaged. It portrays a studio model, but I think it was also in some sense a self-portrait.) She loved bright colors, short skirts, high heels and dangling earrings. I remember when she wore a yellow polka dot bikini—I'm not joking. She could be the life of the party.

When it came to emotion, she didn't believe in holding back either the positive or the negative feelings. So I also remember her screaming and crying, sulking in her room and throwing a plate of spaghetti at the wall. In the bad times, she was a volcano waiting to erupt.

For a chubby, shy, introspective kid like me, she was a bit intimidating. But I adored her. I'd do anything to win her approval and ward off her blues.

For most of her life, she was remarkably open about sex. She and my father divorced when I was a pre-teen. After that, she never tried to hide the fact that she had lovers. I didn't understand at the time that at least some of her sexual adventures were compensation for deep feelings of inadequacy. All I saw was a vibrant, desirable woman who wasn't afraid to take what she wanted.

I don't think she actually ever told me “the facts of life”–there were reference books available around the house—but I do recall our conversation around the time that I was besotted by my first lover. I was fourteen, I believe. Mom warned me to be careful, to remember that the first man with whom I had sex would have an emotional hold on me for the rest of my life. I note now that she didn't tell me NOT to have sex. Pretty remarkable. I guess she trusted me, or else assumed that a prohibition from her would not have had any effect. I've realized in retrospect that she and my father probably had a sexual relationship before they were married. For a nice respectable Jewish girl, that must have taken a good deal of courage.

I didn't understand until much later how fundamentally unhappy my mother was. Despite all her accomplishments, she was bitter and envious, convinced that she'd been handed a raw deal, robbed of the opportunities she deserved. Under her bravado lurked persistent self-doubts. She spent most of her short life searching for something that would convince her she was worthy. For years she was a secret alcoholic. Only when she got into a serious automobile accident did she “hit bottom” and start on the rocky path toward sobriety.

She found a Higher Power that soothed much of her pain. Unfortunately, she also repudiated the sexual openness of her earlier years. She criticized my lifestyle as sinful. When I showed her a nude photo taken during the same session as my Lisabet Sarai headshot, she condemned me as possessed by the Satan.

I suspect that if she were alive now, she wouldn't approve of my literary career. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't share it with her. Why cause her distress?

When I was growing up, I thought that she and I were quite different. Now I see how much we are alike and how much I've learned from her. Fortunately I seemed to have absorbed more of the positive than the negative. I'm fundamentally happy, content with my life and my choices—probably because I never doubted her love.

My mother is responsible for teaching me the value of thinking for myself. “Do you want to be a sheep?” she'd scoff when I complained that nobody else at school was wearing snow pants, or that all the other girls already had bras. She made me brave enough to make my own way without being influenced by the crowd.

Like my mom, I'm ready to try my hand at activities that I've never attempted. I may not be as skilled as she was, but that doesn't stop me from sewing, drawing, dancing or learning new languages. She never let anyone suggest there was something she couldn't or shouldn't do. If it were not for her example, I probably never would have submitted my first novel to Black Lace. When I'm feeling uncertain about some new venture, I remember her and think, what the hell. Why not?

I'm no Marilyn Monroe, but I inherited some of her curves and once I got to grad school and over my shyness, I discovered that I could throw a mean party. I love vivid colors and provocative styles, though I recognize that with each passing year, they look more ridiculous on me. Too bad.

I still have several pairs of her dangly earrings. (She pierced my ears with a needle when I was eleven.) I wear them on special occasions.

In fact, I think I'll go don a pair today, to celebrate Mother's Day.

I hope that wherever she is, she'll be pleased.