On Moms as Tricksters

I like to think of mothers as tricksters. My friend Wayne - who studied tricksters with me - once spoke of mothers as "orchestrators of their children's lives." Wayne and I had another class together in rhetoric, in which I recall the subject of rhetorical situations coming up. I mentioned that I thought motherhood was a rhetorical situation. I think some people thought this was pretty peculiar, but I had an interesting conversation with another classmate later about how any kind of person-hood might be considered a rhetorical situation, and parenthood in particular. I don't know that I'm right, it's just something to ponder.

Isn't this picture funny? Is she preparing her child for the great unknown? Is she sending him out to learn how to swim? Is she gonna walk off any second? Is she reassuring him, or telling him the ocean is a bad, bad place and you should never go in it unless there are CIA operatives chasing you with guns? I wonder what the bird is thinking.

I also keep thinking (and laughing at myself) about how I, as a mother, don't want to be an "orchestrator," don't want to be "She Who Hates to be Contradicted," which is funny because in saying as much, I am refusing the be contradicted about it. It's kind of like the "I am NOT in denial!" t-shirts. The problem is, when you are a mother, you are constantly needing to bridge the gap, be the mediator, between what you think the world will expect of your child, what you expect of your child, what you know your child expects of him/herself, what your spouse expects, etc. etc. This makes for an inherently contradictory situation, pretty much day in and day out. You also have to mediate between trying to teach your child optimism, while knowing that there is a lot of reason to be very pessimistic about life. One of the most tricksterly aspects about being a mother is when you know (societal expectations, shame culture, yada yada) that your kid shouldn't do a certain thing, but when they do it, you are totally laughing at them. My husband has been huffy with me more than once when he has been trying to give my son (or daughter) a sober talking-to, and I'm giggling behind my hand. Sometimes my kids are just a hoot, and sometimes it's when they are being very "naughty." Maybe I'm a wierd mom that way. I hope it's a good thing.

And now for a somewhat ironic anecdote: one day I was listening to some accoustic jazz music, and my daughter kept asking me what that squeaking noise was. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was the sound the guitarist makes when he slides his fingers down the frets abruptly. To me, it was a part of the music, but to her it was noise. This was a peculiar inversion of the John Cage scenario described by Hyde, and the perceptions of music versus noise. I just found it particularly interesting because the child (my daughter) was being the prescriptive one.