Mozarts Of Maternity

Back from a long string of days wandering in the deserts of CFS, I read an article in last week's New Yorker about the French intellectual and feminist, Elisabeth Badinter.

Talking about the dilemmas faced by mothers, Badinter says,

"If you're a mother, you are either too present or too absent;  you can't win.  You have to be a Mozart of maternity to reach the right absence-presence balance."

Ah yes, Mozart--that feather-light touch, that depth of sentiment, that endless inventiveness, that total  mastery--that's what a mother should be.

My own mother's style was more along Wagnerian lines:  persistently present and passionate, rich in color and drama.  In reaction, my own mothering was minimalist, sort of in the style of Philip Glass.  For example, my mother chose my wedding dress for me.  As a consequence, by the time they were three, my daughters were deciding what to wear to pre-school.  Often the outfits were less than becoming, but I fervently believed that as long as they were protected from the weather, it was my duty to stay out of their way.  I also believed that a major justification for a woman to have a career was to protect her children from becoming the sole focus of her energies.

Of course what you're getting here is my version.  I'm sure that my daughters found me way too present in some ways and too absent in others.  And I know that my mother's oppressive hovering, in her view, was only the expression of her ideas about love and duty. 

In my family, mothering styles seem to skip a generation:  my mother's mother allowed her to leave the village for high school and then university.  After age fourteen, my mother never lived at home again. 

Surely my family is not the only one where mothers lurch from pole to pole of the maternal dialectic.  If so, somewhere out there must exist that perfect synthesis:  a Mozart of maternity, with that lightness of touch, that depth of feeling.... 

If you know one, please let us hear about her.

What Mozart Saw

"Though ... [Mozart] lived through the French Revolution you search his letters in vain for anything other than the most oblique references to this continental cataclysm.  He had no feeling for nature and no interest in the visual arts.   In his letters home during his wide-ranging travels he describes everything he heard and nothing he saw."

I found this quote by Anthony Tomassini here--one more confirmation of my belief that we each perceive the world in radically different terms.

Years ago we lived next door to the retired director of the National Arboretum.  He was an affable gentleman who asked my permission to prune our tree--the sight of our unkempt ornamental pear was distressing to him.  One day I was in the car with him, and he kept a running commentary on all the sidewalk trees we passed.  For me, at that time, a tree was an indistinct mass of green atop a brown pole, but on that drive I realized that when our neighbor looked at the world, he saw trees.

A gardener friend looks at the world and sees bushes (which for me are an indistinct mass, etc.).  She doesn't just keep track of her own bushes, but of those in neighboring villages as well.  We'll drive past some stranger's yard and she'll say "That lilac suffered a lot last winter.  But it seems to be recovering nicely now."

My zoology professor saw birds everywhere.  He'd be driving us to a field trip and out of the corner of his eye point out little brown fluttering forms that I could barely see, much less identify.

My husband perceives the world in terms of fulcrums and levers, forces and currents.

I drive down the road and see dogs, and here in Vermont--lucky me--also chickens and cows and horses and goats.  

And I notice sounds (so like Mozart, no?), which is both a blessing and a curse.  The sound of birds is the essence of spring for me, and their silence in the fall depresses me as much or more as the fading light.
I am acutely attuned to people's voices, their volume and pitch, the rhythms of their speech.  When certain announcers come on the radio, I have to turn it off, or leave the room.  I know several people with the habit of letting out a sudden explosive laugh, and when I talk with them I find myself flinching in anticipation.  I cannot read if there is music playing.  I can barely make myself enter a store during the Xmas season.

Not only do we all perceive different worlds, we are different worlds.  And this reminds me of a magnificent quote by Proust about the function of art:

"...style for the writer, just as color for the painter, is a matter not of technique  but of vision.  It is the revelation, which would be impossible by direct and conscious means, of the qualitative difference in the way in which the world appears to us.  This difference, if it weren't for art, would remain the eternal secret of each of us.  Only through art can we come out of ourselves and know what another sees of that universe which is not the same as ours, and whose landscapes would have remained as unknown to us as those of the moon.  Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we watch it multiply, and we have as many worlds at our disposal as there are original artists."  (My translation.)

Growing Into His Name

Wolfie's real name is Wolfgang, but we call him "Wolfie," pronounced the way Constanze says it to her husband in Amadeus: Voool-fie.

Like Constanze's husband, our Wolfie in his early years has been a bit of a goofball. He has a great big head, broad paws, long tail, and a narrow body that could use a set of shoulder pads. German Shepherds mature slowly, and at age three Wolfie still has some pup-like traits about him. This is especially obvious in contrast with twelve-year-old Lexi, the dowager, who is all about dignity, domination, and dinner. When I let them outside, Wolfie hunches down before her, ears back, tail wagging low, hoping that she will, for old times' sake, give him a run for his money. But Lexi has left all that foolishness behind.

Now Wolfie has a new friend, a massive six-month-old German Shepherd puppy, a male, and what I have seen between them has taught me a great deal about dog manners and mores. When Wolfie and the pup are loose in the meadow, Wolfie is always the chaser, and the puppy always get caught. And every time he is caught he is rolled by Wolfie, and while I apologize to his owner the puppy comes up smiling, begging to be chased again.

The most interesting interactions happen when we are walking them both on leash, side by side. Wolfie is always a little in front, looking straight ahead. The puppy trots along, stealing looks at Wolfie. Every once in a while, unable to help himself, the puppy crosses in front of me and in an ecstasy of self-abasement pokes his pointy muzzle into the corner of Wolfie's lips. And does my silly Wolfie then go bananas and leap about doing play bows, the way I expect him to? Not at all. Wolfie stands his ground, turns his head aside, and looks tolerant.

"My, doesn't Wolfie look regal!" the puppy's owner said the other day.

Regal? Wolfie? But I must admit that yes, in the presence of the young dog, Wolfie has suddenly acquired a new dignity. Pretty soon, we'll have to start calling him Wolfgang.