Mothersbane

The September 2010 issue of Harper’s magazine has a great memoir piece by Roxana Robinson called “Paralyzed: Learning to Live in Polio’s Shadow”. (Subscription required) Robinson discusses how a disability, in this case the long-term effects of her mother’s childhood battle with Polio, can affect family dynamics for decades. I shared the article with my mother and we marveled at the parallels between the Robinson’s experiences and our own.

One passage that struck me occurs near the end of the article:

• “Pain takes up residence within a family, just as it does within a person. No one knows how to deal with it. People figure out their own responses, which may or may not be useful. Pain within a family is crippling. It uses up all the oxygen in the room. It limits your gestures and your certainty. It drains you of confidence. Pain imposes a black silence, where there might be something else – air words, tenderness. Here’s what I wish. I wish I had known a way to feel my mother’s pain and to feel sorry for her instead of feeling helpless and angry, instead of keeping that huge dark reservoir of love and pity and sorrow sealed off from myself and from her.”