Mama as Reader and thoughts on the Madonna (again)
As a mother, everything cuts so much closer to the bone.
I believe that I am a person who has always felt emotions with great passion. My highs, Mt. Everest; my lows, the Great Abyss. I am often covered in goosebumps. Photographs, songs, poems, novels, billboards. You name it, I’m inspired. I didn’t think my well of emotion could be dug much deeper.
Until I had Silas.
I have, several times, referred to the Madonna. Specifically a scene in The Passion of the Christ in which Mary, mother of Jesus, witnesses her son– beaten, bloodied, thorned, and haggard– fall while he is carrying his cross to execution. As I remember the film, she was watching the procession from an alleyway. She sees him fall. Remembers him fall as a small child. Remembers her panic and her fear. She runs to help him– her adult son–to mop his brow as Roman soldiers hoist him up again shoving her aside. The scene is helpless and desperate. Again, as I sit here typing, I am covered in goosebumps.
Before I continue, I should make one thing clear. I am not profoundly religious. I do, however, like to admit that I’m hip on Christ. He was a prophet and a radical. He believed in compassion and redemption. He is the protagonist in one of our world’s greatest stories. I can’t argue with that. Still, I went to see the Passion of the Christ alone and out of sheer curiosity. That same curiosity that prevented me, when I was nine, from looking away from the charred remains of slowly blackening whole pig at my uncle’s BBQ. I remember running down the driveway to get away as far away from that death as possible. Still, when I reached a point as close to the road as I could get without being punished, I stopped, hands on knees, and stared at that pig. Stared for what could have been hours. As much as I wanted to block it out, I couldn’t turn away. Perhaps that’s how it was with The Passion. I’m sure that’s what Mel Gibson was hoping for anyway.
And, yes, I was the only one in the theater enjoying my popcorn and fountain drink. (Truth be told, I felt like a real ass hole when I realized I was slurping from the bottom of my cup while everyone else was covering their eyes and crossing themselves during some of the film’s more violent scenes.)
Anyhow, I was largely unmoved by the film. That’s not true. I was unmoved by the gratuitous violence in the film. I was struck almost dumb by that scene with the Madonna. It was so terribly powerful.
And that was before I had Silas.
Now, as you can plainly see, I think of it quite frequently. Obsessively, perhaps. I am humbled and haunted by a mother’s great, undying love for her child.
I wasn’t intending to write about the Madonna. When I sat down to type, I intended to revisit For Colored Girls… by Ntozake Shange. I wanted to discuss how my reading of the choreopoem has changed. How I, as a reader, have changed. When I read For Colored Girls… in college I remember feeling only mildly enthusiastic about it. Last week as I finished it, I could barely stay in my seat. There is a scene in the end in which an abused young mother witnesses, well, an event similar to that in which Mary witnesses in The Passion. Honestly, I thought I might implode. I became nothing but my intake of breath. I just couldn’t deal with it. But still, I sat there reading and feeding my son and looking that fear square in the face. Just like I had with that pig.
Earlier, I said that I hadn’t thought that my well of emotion could be dug much deeper. Again, I find that I’ve lied. I do remember a time when I thought having a child might not be the right decision for me because I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Handle the love, that is. No, not the love. The vulnerability. The idea that if, like the Madonna or the mother in Shange, I were to lose this love, this child, I would be stripped down to nothing but the ugly core of my pain.
People talk about how children enhance their lives, how they give purpose and teach lessons. It seems to me, in many ways, children nudge us toward enlightenment. Until now, I’ve never understood the sacrifice of the Madonna. Never understood how that story might resonate with every mother. How subtle and powerful that character is in the story of Christ’s life. Why the angel came to Mary first.I am proud now to be able to understand. I am also deeply and inextricably afraid.
