Wednesday’s Bloom at 529 + 530 + 531 weeks: Time is all we have, anyway
/// multitudinous mothering entity /// A mother who moves through the world and navigates spaces while attached to or in close, physical proximity of her children. Italicized words expanded on in the Glossary.
Wednesday’s Bloom at 529 + 530 + 531 weeks
Time is all we have, anyway
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
For Reverend Mother L__, who, just one generation removed from being born into slavery, would not, could not, cede her newborn sovereignty to a system that deemed her children’s bodies more valuable in a field than in a schoolhouse, and who, armed with the word of God and a knife that she put to some landowner’s throat, dared to say No. Justified as she was, it was illegal for a black woman to defend herself or her children in that manner, and so she fled one night from that unknown place the family would never speak of again. She left with everyone birthed from her womb and nothing else—not even a proper husband to guide their steps—creating a whole new life, founding a congregation, and seeding many futures along the way.
Thank you Reverend Mother L__ for your willingness to stand in your truth, even when it meant standing alone most of the time. Thank you for following your foresight and for birthing one of the many threads that would one day lead to me. Thank you for modeling courage and audacity in your mothering more than a century before I would begin my own initiations to mother in freedom.
I am celebrating the tiny, immaterial moments that bind these sweet and raucous days together. The seconds that swiftly become minutes, the minutes that weave slowly and methodically into hours, the hours that collect and turn ever so gently, as effortlessly as our dear Earth, swelling as they will into days, the days that spread out evenly into weeks, the weeks that stack asymmetrically into months, and the months that anchor the passage of time year after year. All these singular breaths and heartbeats, bits of living no one can ever truly count, layered beautifully into the rings of trees, coiled into the wondrous fusion that illuminates every star, woven tightly into a spiral called time. All of it— just time. Time is all we have, anyway.
I am celebrating my newly post-birthgiving body, moving around this world with a baby at the breast and a toddler’s palm enclosed in my hand when we walk the big streets, and when we enter the crosswalk. My big boys and big girl delight in taking their own steps, sometimes running so far ahead of me. Their grownness makes me remember their smallness, how it once upon a time seemed so hectic to travel with one, then, two munchkins. And now there are five of them. How am I doing this, I ponder alongside all the other feelings that converge when we miss the bus, and I am out of snacks, and my back aches from wearing the baby for so long, and it’s rush hour and no one can get their special seat by the window, oh and of course, someone needs to pee!
I am celebrating the love that is here, in all the ways it takes shape in my life. I am celebrating the gifts, the kindness, the grace, the softness, the gentleness, the miracles. I am celebrating the mighty distance that I’ve journeyed to live more fully into my soft, mothering heart. It feels lonely here, at times. And I am learning how not to run away from that feeling.
I am celebrating the stories that are coming forth in my dreams. I awake feeling possible, delighted, curious. I am making notes in journals, recording voice notes of me processing my thoughts out loud, starting mighty essays with a sprinkling of life-distilled sentences that come when my hand and back and feet are deep in the work of being a mother. The camera is my faithful witness as I dance inside our ephemeral magnitudes. I watch the playback closely, observing my born-again body for changes and similitudes. I film myself creating, moving, mothering, studying. I meticulously archive the minutiae, making provisions for the understory to become known one day. The raw footage waits patiently for someone, maybe me, maybe my children, to edit it and turn it into something magnificent.
I am celebrating the ones who offer their love and presence to me and my family. I am celebrating the capacity of their hearts to hold soft and tender space for me in these messy labors of becoming. I am celebrating the beautiful ones whose hearts no longer feel intertwined with mine. Every love has taught me something holy and essential about being me. I am grateful.
I am celebrating that I am healing from these hemorrhoids. The daily tending is an ongoing discovery, a humbling lesson in faith and digestion and biology. Whatever we take in alters us, and has to pass through somehow.
I am celebrating the prayers that are being answered, and if not answered at least heard and held. I am celebrating the naming of silenced hurts and the releasing of static rage. This slow reckoning is a liberation, and each day I make more room for my dreams and my children’s dreams. I free up space in my bones, my breath, my blood. I have more energy to live.
I am celebrating the mothers who dance with me from their sacred portals across the globe. Though we are often separated by circumstance and sea, by land and life rhythms, we still find our way into the dance together. Ours is a movement that is continuous and felt. We meet in our hearts. We touch hands in our dreamscapes. We spin in and out of each other’s memories, choreographing new versions of our stories, of ourselves, as we grow. However it may look, we are always dancing somehow.
About this photo story
Mother Mother dances with Jubilee in one of her favorite open space studios. She is wearing Luminous Glory, who participates in the dance by swinging sweetly between states of nursing and sleeping. Mother Mother and Jubilee take turns guiding each other in movement activities and playing dance games. They experiment with recording themselves in motion from different angles in the space.
Wednesday’s Bloom: Moments in Motherhood is Mother Mother’s weekly-ish, textual experiment in capturing moments from her mothering journeys in 1000 words or less…
Originally birthed when her first born was 8 weeks old, the first iteration of Wednesday’s Bloom: Textual Portraits of a New Mommy lived for about a year and a half in another blog space, and then Mother Mother let the series rest for more than 8 years before beginning this second iteration, Wednesday’s Bloom: Moments in Motherhood, here inside of Notes On My Life As A Multitudinous Mothering Entity. Journey inside Mother Mother’s process of revisiting and archiving the first volume of Wednesday’s Bloom as an emerging constellation in Mother Mother’s Reading Room. Read on to try out Mother Mother’s Seeds & Sprouts practice inspired by her labors of crafting this week’s post.
Seeds & Sprouts
Sensing Time
Seed Prompt
A seed prompt is a short activity that initiates multiple openings for continuing exploration. This is designed to be something you can do in 5-10 minutes.
Make a chart with 3 columns. Choose your favorite sense to work with for this prompt.
Title the first column with that Sense:______ (smells or tastes or sounds, etc.) If you selected “smells” as your favorite sense, for example, you would list 3 to 10 different smells connected to significant memories/moments in your life.
Title the second column Place: in this column list the place where you experienced that sensation. It can be a physical space, an embodied space, or a dreamscape space.
Title the third column Time: in this column write when this sensation occurred, or when intuition tells you it will occur. Be as specific (or not) as you need: last week, May 5, 1998, when I was 8, when I am a grandmother…
Sprout Practice
A sprout practice is an opportunity to expand on whatever most stirred within your heart during the seed prompt. Save this practice for when your time is soft and you can take your time being with the discovery.
Preparation:
Create a chart like you did in the seed prompt for each one of your senses.
Are there other senses you have identified beyond sight, taste, smell, touch, and hearing?
Are there other sensory-sourced memories you want to add to your original chart?
Choose one sensory-sourced memory from your chart to work with and explore it further in one or more of the following ways:
Writing
Write about what you remember, and about what you have forgotten. Give yourself permission to reinvent parts of the story, as it serves your healing or processing labors right now. Be gentle with your storymaking, and remove any pressures to tell a complete story. Follow the thread of the sensory-sourced memory wherever it leads, and discover what other creations/stories/memories can be birthed from there.
Sensing
Revisit the sensory input that is a part of the memory you selected. If it’s a scent, go to where you can smell that again, or recreate it as best you can. If it’s a sound or a song, play a recording of it. If it’s a place you saw, go there again or get a picture of it.
When you are in deep, soft communion with this sensory experience, consider these questions and invitations:
How has the passage of time changed your experience of this sensation?
What do you understand about that moment that you didn’t realize until now (that you are revisiting the sensory experience)?
What is different about experiencing this sensory moment this time than before?
Dialoguing
Share the story of this moment with someone who has the capacity to listen with an open heart. Invite them to ask you questions if you need support being present with this memory. Do your best to have your conversation in a moment when you feel safe and supported to speak freely.
Revisit this expanded practice daily, or as often as nourishes you, revisiting sensory-sourced memories from your chart(s), or making new charts when needed and beginning the practice all over again.
