Lemurian City of Ladies

If I look again, what will I see?

Posted in High Priestess by soulsister on August 14th, 2006

I am about 18 months old and the baby of the family. I have 2 older brothers - Dan who is 5 and Richard who is 7. At this time in my life they don’t really figure enough to exist in my memories. On this day I am sitting in my high chair in the kitchen, which is positioned just behind the kitchen door, to the right of the fire place. There is no fire lit in the grate today. It must be summertime. Mammy is feeding me my dinner. She is sitting on a chair directly in front of me, holding a dish of dinner in one hand and a spoon in her other hand. She wants me to eat faster, but I am not co-operating. Unusually mammy is wearing her good clothes. She smells fresh and clean, and she is wearing lipstick. She looks pretty. I like it when mammy looks pretty. Right now I have her attention, sort of. Usually she never rushes me when she is feeding me, and often smiles her tired, slow smile. But today is different. There is almost an air of impatience about her. The woman who helps her out sometimes comes rushing into the kitchen and announces loudly that she will feed me and that it is time for mammy to go. Mammy rarely goes out anywhere, even to the local shops. She starts to get up, half-heartedly handing the bowl and spoon to the other woman. I cry out. I don’t want my mammy to go. I don’t want her to leave me. I don’t want to stay with someone who has no love for me at all. The woman grows more insistent. Mammy is indecisive. She wants to go. She is under pressure from this other person to do what she said she was planning to do, but I am crying, and she doesn’t want to leave me sad.

And then the realisation hits me. My first memory is one of separation. Mammy and I are not one after all. Mammy is one person and I am another. And I have the power to either stop my mother from going to Dublin, or to allow her to go. It has nothing to do with the other woman at all. If I keep crying, mammy will stay. I want her to stay. I don’t want her to go. My stomach is churning at the fear that mammy might leave me behind. I want to scream, ‘Don’t go mammy. Don’t leave me with this woman who I don’t like and she doesn’t like me’’. But I don’t say these words. I keep them inside of me where they live on forever. Instead I stop crying and smile a watery smile at mammy. She hands the bowl and spoon over to the woman, and kisses me on my cheek and walks out the kitchen door. I hear the front door opening and then it is very gently pulled closed behind . I weep, and wait.

—-Working on the above memory has completely altered my life long interpretation of what happened on this day. I have always believed that the primary point here was my sense of power over my mother; that it was down to me whether she went to Dublin on that day, or not. But in writing down the events of that afternoon, I can see now that that was not the significant factor at all. What really mattered, what entered my soul that day was a sense of loss and loneliness that has never left. Did this mark the break in the symbiotic relationship between mother and baby, and the consequent emergence of the individual? Is the ego based on a sense of lack?

4 Responses to 'If I look again, what will I see?'

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  1. imogen88 said, on August 14th, 2006 at 3:51 pm

    Thought provoking experienced and writing :-)

  2. Lori said, on August 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm

    You actually remember this? That’s amazing. My earliest visual memory is sitting on my mom’s lap in a car playing with her pearl necklace. I must have been about two to be sitting on her lap like that. The earliest memory of a conversation was when I was just 4 years old. My mother was watching John Kennedy’s funeral on television. I overhead a prayer being read at the funeral which of course referred to “God”. I asked my mother: “Who is God?”. Her reply was a simple one for a child: “God is the Person who takes care of the world.” That worked for me at the moment.

  3. soulsister said, on August 14th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Hi Lori, yes this would be my very first memory and it has long haunted me. I doulble checked with my mom about my age and it is about right, give or take a month either way….

  4. cronelogical said, on August 15th, 2006 at 2:49 am

    I remember the exact date: July 31, 1929: The day they told me I had a sister and she turned out to be just another baby! I was three and a month. If some things happened before that they all have to do with place rather than people, like the big white tents the men who built elevators lived in, red elevators and a huge dog who was my keeper! Fran

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