It is for a male and interesting thought to dwell on. Exactly how long do we need a mother? It might also be worth asking if the answer is no whether or not we need a mother from time to time? Or is it just that sometimes we need a mother and sometimes we don’t? Amazing questions. Do you need your mother?
I should be fair. The answer is absolutely no in my case. I should have been away from that woman from the time I didn’t need the tit. But yet later in life I was calling her with my problems. What do I do? But then I look back and I see that my inability to deal with that problem came exactly from the fact that that woman was never apart of any positive constructive thing I ever did. She simply played no role in anything good and played every role in everything that was discouraging.
Right now, I have this cat family. The cats are almost 100 days old. They are quite ambulatory. They have begun going on adventures for long periods of time. They have dealt with the emotions of family in a carnivore setting. But mostly they have come to find that if Mama is not particularly needed for food, she’s gone. And that is exactly what I see and I see that she goes out exactly the same way every time. Mama has hunting grounds or Mama has a second life with another homeowner. She wishes you all well but she’ll catch you the next time. And she’ll be by because she knows there’s food here at least twice a day. Yep, that’s Mom getting a bite to eat. Say hi everybody. Hi Mom. Bye Mom. And she’s gone.
The little cats are in a state of purgatory. The boy is already going on longer sojourns. Obviously along the way his curiosity for movement will lead him to something moving. And he’ll play with it and kill it and maybe he’ll eat some of it and that’ll be it. It’ll happen for the girls too. It just seems that Mom was so insistent that the kibble was all important. Even to this day, mom only shows up for the kibble. The girls seem to understand that the way to have children is through kibble. Wisdom in that I am sure.
What can we understand from obligate carnivores? The mother was excellent on all accounts. She would go off on a hunt, just to stretch her muscles, but she was absolutely back with her children when she was needed. She basically lay down with them for more than a month. 2 months even she would spend most of her time lying down. And then in the third month there was more about movement. By the end of the third month everyone was pretty independent. They were traveling further and further and the job was over.
When the job was over, Good luck to you all. Is this a lesson? It is. In a world where people would often go off to war, what is it to a mother to say goodbye to their child? A tear in her eye. I wish you all the luck and love. Remember not to drink too much. Don’t be so much of a hero. Just stay alive and come back. And then they’re gone and then they’re gone. What’s the bloody truth? Does she suffer in her dreams? Her boy is off at war. Maybe he’ll leave or maybe he’ll die. Or maybe he’ll come back crippled. Or maybe he’ll come back with dementia. Maybe he’ll come back fine but will straight away be coming alcoholic or worse. Maybe he’ll come back fine but just won’t be willing to do any work that needs to be done or be willing to find any money to help the family. Or what?
When I think about mothers right now, I think of profoundly abusive and intrusive creatures. Someone is going to scream misogyny but it is not about that. It is about a lack of desire to be mothered. Mothered or smothered. I do not wish to be helped. I do not wish to have thoughts put in my ear. I do not wish to be moved from my place. I do not wish corrections to be made. I do not wish for a really good idea to cause me to lift my legs or my ass or to change my position. I really do not wish to be stared at or photographed at this moment. I do not wish to be reminded of things I don’t want to remember and I really do not wish to have a layer of bureaucracy between me and food. Right now, I have a lovely political system that allows me to acquire food for myself and what that food is. I do not need outside influences disturbing my political decisions at this time.
Which is to say what? I remember getting a bath one time from a nice lady who was mothering me. Do you know how nice it is to have someone clean you as if you were a baby? Is it nice for you? Would that feel nice in the warm water and those warm hands with the bar of so for the sponge or just on their own, caressing and cleaning and scratching away the itches? When my father was at the end of his time, the nurse had a rye sense of humor and thought she should mention but he truly enjoyed the sponge bath. If it was just something practiced that she knew would get a laugh, it was appreciated. But to me that was so my dad. Please, he would say, only the best but mother away. All he could get from the hotels.
But then there was boyhood. I wanted to run. We had sports. We were sports guys. We were ball players. We wanted to play ball. We wanted to play games. We wanted to run up big scores. We wanted to score touchdowns. I wanted to kick field goals. Later, I wanted to hit baseballs and pick them up in the infield. I didn’t really want to but I ended up as a catcher. Maybe I was a clever catcher. I don’t think I was a very good defensive catcher. I was too lazy. I wasn’t even much of a hitter. I could have been a better hitter. Lots to think about here. A lot of it has to do with I live with my mom and my dad is not my sports coach.
I can’t really assign blame per se but when I look back at what could have otherwise been very successful youthful sports career, the problem was in nutrition. My dad might have known something about sports but he was not around. My mom knew nothing about sports or nutrition. My mom knew nothing except that she was nervous and needed to satisfy her constant nervousness. And she smoked. And of course, she was a meat eater.
Bad eating habits? The worst. I was so far from leading a healthy lifestyle that was ridiculous. I didn’t even know what to do with healthy friends. I had no idea how to restrain myself. I only knew that Mom said that eating is a replacement for whatever it is you’re hungry for. If you need something, eat something. And that was the consuming lifestyle fueled by automobiles and lots of money she was clever enough to shake out of the trees working independently. Starving people feeding the dragon and living the dream.
During the time that the cats were growing up, there was an issue about whether they belonged in my house or not. My call is no. I like them around and I don’t mind them visiting my house occasionally because it is very good and keeps the mouse population down. But I don’t want house cats. I’ve made that clear. So they are who they are and they can live how they live and I’m sorry for the lack of nostalgia but that’s my choice. When it became important to teach the little cats not to go in the house, mama was right there at the crossroads to remind them not to go. She learned. Nobody’s going in the house. Nobody’s going to get adopted. It’s a different world and that’s all there is to it. Mama was there for all of that. Right when it was very important to figure this thing out, momma was there keeping order and making sure her children understood the truth.
And now she’s gone. It’s been 95 days and her job is done. Mom is her own person living her own life and frankly my decision not to let her in the house has her looking for better ways to live. I can’t blame her. It’s probably very vindictive and she’s probably using all of this negative energy to fuel her choices. I say this because I know a lot about Russian women and what happens when they get vindictive. Nevertheless, what do we have? We have three kids left to figure out life.
They don’t need milk. They have already learned to stalk each other. They understand that they can climb. They understand how to fight. They understand how to starve the life out of something. And I have seen them licking dead mice so they know the taste of blood and fresh meat. Life is going to happen. It’s only a strange moment. We are alive and we don’t really have a mama to talk to. Mama is just like us. Just an independent person.
But then we have consumerism. What about commercialism? What about all of the advertising and all of the products? What about all of those female models? The young thin girls but also the older women. We know who they are. They are the ones who balance motherhood and business. They are the ones who can do it all. They are the modern ones. They are forever fierce in the photographs. They have absolute resolve that what they are doing is the right thing. They are the boss. They control everything. The kids will get everything they need but business will have to be done. The bottom line is if we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough money and nobody’s helping us but me.
I always see family businesses as requiring family to run it. If we are going to live in a capitalistic society, I have always been jealous of family businesses. It’s not so much that I envy how much labor is sometimes necessary or the economic headaches, although I don’t mind being a boss. It’s just that I have always dreamed of being a part of the functioning family unit as opposed to a dysfunctional one. In a family business, function is obvious. Whatever it is that you sell or make, the work needs to be finished and everyone needs to do their job. And in the case of a restaurant or a flower shop or a dry goods store or anything really, the young people can be helping from the time they can help and responsibility can be learned every step of the way.
Dysfunctional versus functional pretty much says it all when speaking of families or businesses. Maybe if we are going to live in a capitalistic society, maybe it’s time to quit protecting our children and working for them and better to get them working and protecting themselves. Maybe it’s the greatest thing in the world to have a young people make their own money through their own labor instead of waiting around for gifts from Mom and Dad. Maybe we are all better off working for our money than we are waiting for presents from above.
Now, I have some vegan thinking that says women like being mothers and mothering but that it can sometimes be a problem. My thinking has always been but we just satisfy this necessity everyday as a bureaucratic thing. If we have a woman who has definite need of some masculine help, I say we should get her the help that she needs. And if she needs to direct someone to dig something or to gather something, I absolutely think there should be someone to be there for her to get this done. And if it’s reasonably edible and has no meat in it, if she wanted to cook something for the helping people, everyone would say that this is completely understandable. I personally have no problems satisfying the needs of the constituency. I’m just saying that we need to be open and honest about what we need and why we need it. We also need to be honest about how long we need it. For example, when exactly do we stop needing our mothers?
If I keep this as simple as possible, I think the answer to the question is that we always need moms but what we need is for them to do their jobs. However it is we live, thinking of a much more communal and active way of life being our choice, whatever jobs need to be done by mothers or aspiring mothers need to be. If it’s about cooking and cleaning or taking care of the little ones, let there be people to do those jobs enough at the jobs get done. And in this way, the profession never dies and we learn how to do things well and how to avoid problems. Figure out a way to allow men into this process and to disallow alcohol from the men and I think we really have something. I definitely see a healthy future If we can figure that out.
