Allow me to build on my sentiment,
“I legit expect my kids to follow me following the goose”…
In my earliest year as a mother (age: 23), I remember turning my infant’s life over to the greater connected protection of the universe, The Big Love.
I sat, uneasy in the rocking chair, playing back the previous night’s episode of Law and Order, special victims unit in a post 9/11, post Columbine afternoon.
The curtains hung in the dusk-dusted nursery where a summer nap was being kept at bay. I was restless, contemplating these evils in humanity and how to shield her outside of my arms.
In this glimpse of fear, I began to wake and consider something new. Sunlight broke through the curtains, striking the diamond on my left ring finger and curiosity on how to live differently started to dance around the room like a fairy. Both sets of our eyes watched the chase of light I directed about with turns of my wrist.
“No,” I said to fear.
I did not want to “mother afraid”.
I did not want to “worry all the time”.
I did not want the pressure of “best” or the perceived stain of “worst”.
I did not want the responsibility of her story or her decisions. Or – somehow seemingly worse – I did not want her carrying the weight of my own, personal regret.
In between that afternoon, where I “turned her over” to good, (understanding as death is possible, life is possible) and the first time I watched her crawl in accord with her own curiosity away from where I sat under a park tree, the seed of trust I allowed to grow within turned my motherhood journey into a continual invitation to Ellen (and eventually her sister, Lucy) to follow my lead.
This trust evolved and my heart began to tumble down the hill of change.
I did not want to be an obvious American mother, repeatedly getting her toddler out of a minivan for errands – adorned in college mascot or MLB bird alike.
I did not want to be continually sold cleverly colored shoebox size shoeboxes for my shoes.
This evolution of self began shifting my experiences as – if I was about to do something just because I thought I should: I questioned it.
I chose differently.
I leaned into what I feared.
I practiced media literacy.
I prayed. I changed. I planted. I grew.
Rhianna enforced afternoons in the Jeep, combing back the long way towards home from the zoo. Pizza adorned fingernails washed up in the historic tub of an ABQ lavender farm, watching sharks in Denver… trying Turkish delight in Park City…
I took on my life; them incorporated.
Our stories are plentiful, meaningful and thick. The meaning of being their leader, their goose, is never lost on me. In and out of the car, into museums and onto the plane: they have followed me.
Unlike the goose (though their personal notice is at least consistent in advertising inconsistency and temperament), I offer, give and set expectations to and of my daughters.
To live without fear seems to still require managing a certain civilian “pay attention” mindset, all while gauging the fine traumatic line of projecting one’s own experience // being careful to avoid infusing too much of the state of the world into predictions of the future.
Indeed. This is the paradox of being more than a “goose goose” or a Mother Goose; pecking rhyme-based rhythm and order.
Aha! See, to be an actual goose, living both into her future and ushering her goslings into their own, ballet slippers are worn making spaghetti while adult lessons yield for the child’s.
With a Pinterest board as lively as her child’s friendships and a dress that fits as accurately as her child’s pants, the mother’s quest stays aware of the child’s. Forever seizing teachable moments to promote the child’s own understanding of motivations, experience and truth.
For in this way, I suppose, the child may equally become a goose.
(PS: the original, straight forward version: https://frozenspaghetti.com/2019/08/04/the-original/)
Frozen Spaghetti 