Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

Pinto
					, Paula C.

English

Re-Constituting Care: A Rights-Based Approach to Disability,
Motherhood, and the Dilemmas of Care

Cihlar
					, James

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering    241 
If my mother did not believe in the food pyramid, 
orthodontia, and sobriety, she believed in Christmas.
If my father mailed me a check, my mother
read the Sunday supplement from Holiday,
the gas station on 13th where I would later buy
my first album, Creedence Clearwater Revival, 
and choose a present from the wall of shelves
stocked with Fisher Price imitations
of the accoutrement of maturity. Faux radio,
sham television, and phony telephone
whose jangly ring disappointed with a null receiver.
Were they homage or mockery of adulthood,
the narrowing in of perception,
items limited only to their intentions,
when what I loved were the clash of colors–
powder blue handle against snow-cone 
white body, sunburst yellow speaker–
the hollowness and stiffness of inflated plastic, 
and the slight hint of formaldehyde?
My mother believed in Christmas presents
just as she believed in staying home sick,
eating what you want, and watching television. 
If my father believed in Chevrolets, 
she believed in Fords.
If he believed in Nixon,
she believed in McGovern. 
My Mother Believed in Christmas
James Cihlar
242    Volume 10, Number 2
James Cihlar
They both believed in
stationary disease–
their definition 
of couch potato syndrome–
and cigarette smoke 
as a cure
for 
ear
ache.


My Mother Believed in Christmas

Duncan
					, Sarah
					 J.

What’s in a Name? An Intergenerational Reflection on Naming Our Daughters

Goldberg
					, Jennifer

“A Mixture of the Madonna and a Woman of the World”: Virginia Woolf ’s Assessment of the Mother

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering    235 
Miss Clairol
Custody
Rog & Scotty’s
Supervalu
Toni home perm
The Pill
“Please Release Me”
Pall Malls
The county lines
My father crossed
Jesus, Mary,
And Joseph
Hot water bottle
Irreconcilable differences
Seagram’s 7
Rage
What My Mother Used
James Cihlar


What My Mother Used

Ford
					, Susan
					 C.

My Daughter, How Do I Teach You What I Haven’t Learned? A Personal View of the Impact of Child Abuse on Mothering

Vryenhoek
					, Leslie

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering           79 
The clutch gave out at Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a small 
glancing scrape on the downhill offramp, 
a sound like almost nothing before the uphill 
shrieking, the smell of burning 
metal, my mother’s fuck-filled
come-on urging 
(the same she used on us when we were late 
or lazy). An Amoco station at the top of that hill, 
my little sister’s uh-oh eyes.
This was the blue Subaru and us, grinding 
to a halt 
twenty hours in to our thirty hour trek
to Mom’s parents. Friday morning, and Eau Claire 
was supposed to be fifteen minutes — gas, bathroom, snack 
and back in the car, kids. Pavement 
pouring out behind like Mom’s personal triumph 
and always the same rules: one can of Pringles, 
gone in the first hour; one restaurant per day; one hotel 
per trip. We had a schedule, we had a budget. At 15,
I could pitch a tent in five minutes, even 
in the swarming dark. (Once, we set the tent 
in a field of Grasslands cactus and Mom 
held our wrists so we could squat, pee 
without piercing our bums. All night
the ground stayed treacherous 
Leslie Vryenhoek
Shifting gears
80           Volume 10, Number 2
Leslie Vryenhoek
beneath our sleeping bags and nearby coyotes 
howled.) 
We’d had our hotel the night before Eau Claire — 
Not even a pee-stink one, my sister’d whispered. 
From the car, I could see Mom 
working on the mechanic, sunglasses 
holding back her hair and her brown eyes 
extra wide, climbing up the height of  him. 
I rolled down my window. 
We’ve got six hundred miles ahead — she shook 
her curls, keys jangling from one finger as her palms 
turned to pleading. I can’t afford a new one 
and we can’t get stuck here all weekend. Oh 
please. 
The voice that made you do things, the reason
I always kept my headphones on. 
She followed that mechanic 
back inside, surrender 
uncertain.
 
A long time and then she came out, 
smiling, hands pulsing like she was splashing 
water on her face, each splash telling us
to get out of the car. She popped the trunk, snatched
the Walkman off my head, didn’t even ask
first. He’s found some parts, says he can fix it cheap,
but not before tomorrow. Says there’s a campground a few miles 
down the highway. The trunk was deconstructing — the tent
in my arms, a sleeping bag for my sister. A perfectly good motel 
practically across the street. 
I said I wasn’t walking. I said This 
is stupid. My sister said Sshh. 
I dropped the tent in the gravel, reached back
into the car for my Walkman. 
My mother shrugged and all her limbs 
came unexpectedly loose. She threw the tent back in the trunk, 
dust with it and walked away, and then that mechanic
drove us to the campground. Mom put her hand
on his thigh and tipped her head 
sideways, her lips tucked under
 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering           81 
Shifting gears
but saying something anyway. 
There wasn’t a pool or mini-golf or anything 
to do but sit by the tent 
so I told Mom it was gross, her hitting 
on that mullet-haired mechanic and she rose
to her feet, unfolding like a slow-motion leaf
and grinned. Somebody’s gotta get the car fixed. Besides
he’s pretty cute, don’t you think? Let’s follow that path, see 
where it goes. 
The path led to a creek where a turtle sunned itself 
on a rock, just a single foot 
dangling 
in the water and Mom stopped, pointed: Look 
at that, girls. Did you ever see —? Her sentence dangling
too, a voice like she’d swallowed
something thick, breathed in
fumes; like all the coffee in her veins 
had turned to syrup. Like a whole day 
lost didn’t matter so much.
Before dark we walked to the store 
for ice cream sandwiches, and Mom insisted 
on holding hands, on swinging 
all our arms forward. 
The car wasn’t ready until two
the next day, which meant an extra long lunch, 
my sister and I alone in a too-bright diner an hour 
after they took our plates and Mom told the waitress 
no more refills — told us to wait at the table 
while she went to check
on the car.
Back on the Interstate, Van Morrison sang 
“Bright Side of the Road” and we danced, laughing, 
giddy just for getting going, glad for every bump 
under the tires. That night we slept in the car at a rest stop full 
of sleeping families and by sun-up, the windows were dripping 
from our honeyed breath.
 


Shifting gears

Millikin
					, Claire

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering           101 
Gradually, door by door, she opened the house 
to the pasture that ran to fields beyond.
The unlocked doors swayed like adolescent girls
on their new long legs, unpracticed.
Horses grazed by thresholds, and feral dogs
haunted the edges, coming in from pinewoods.
Into her house came the animals uncalled—
smelling her need, her tenderness,
the sweet hollow of her hands
cupped and deciduous, cradling
like a mother—in her touch that knowledge
of what’s lost when you truly cannot speak of it.
A family of foxes soon made their den
in her defunct fireplace. She’d burn
no more fires, but the hearth flickered
with red-gold fur as the fox mother curled
to nurse her infants. I remember their eyes
like embers, bright and wet, the part of the fire
that can survive water, stronger than ash. They’d watch
us children come into her house and gradually let
my hand reach nearer, further, further 
into the hearth at last to stroke without breathing 
that fur like silken earth, the finest dirt made vivid,
Georgia’s red clay tempered, a flame the hand could bear.
Claire Millikin
The Foxes
102           Volume 10, Number 2
What burned in that house? Her husband gone,
and daughter long since dead—echoed
shots from the field where he’d caught
the girl in the crosshairs, maybe by accident.
The foxes flourished, cried for no one,
svelte shoulders lilting. They shouldered
what none human could, making home
in the hearth of Demeter while Demeter
drank gin straight and smoked another,
her still beautiful, toothless face tilting up,
catching the light reflecting 
from the fireplace—a darkness brilliant—
visitant sheen and flash of fox.
Claire Millikin


The Foxes

Preston
					, Jean

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering         131 
Saturday, spring 1964:  the twelve year-old 
girl sings out loud to the birds, asks what she
can do for her country, avoids cleaning her room.  
Climbing the tree-hidden, gravel-paved road,
she comes to a house she hadn’t known was
there until today.  (Cerebral Palsy, Sister Agnes 
said when she asked for volunteers.  Treatment 
means exercise four times a day.  Think 
the Second Great Commandment.  Think 
the Golden Rule.  Think about President
Kennedy’s inspiring words.)  Now, at the top 
of the hill, the house with white and peeling paint 
stands small; on the stoop, a cracked clay pot,
black-eyed susans blooming.  Two knocks 
and the mother appears – square face, plain, 
not made-up, frowning at the sun.  She pushes 
stray brown curls behind her ears, lets the girl 
into the too-warm house.  My son can’t take cold, 
the mother says.  Here he is.  Halting at the threshold,
the girl sees a worn-out couch, one wooden chair,
closed yellowed blinds.  Next to the chair, a pole 
lamp, its light centered on a boy on a blanket
on the floor.  He is small for five – arms and legs
tense, held straight. His face is thin, scrubbed clean,
his green eyes open, wide and watching.  Kneeling 
close to the boy’s left side, the mother motions
the girl to his right, shows her what to do.  It takes
the better part of an hour to move the child’s neck, 
shoulders, elbows, knees, hips, hands, fingers, toes 
in rhythmic repetition, a sheen of sweat forming 
on their upper lips, shining on the boy’s white brow, 
scenting the heavy air.  The mother hums in time, 
Jean Preston
Hill Street
132         Volume 10, Number 1
talks to the boy like any mother talks to her child – 
This will soon be over.  You are such a brave boy.  
I made you some oatmeal cookies.  When they finish, 
the girl tells the mother, I’d like to come back next week.  
Not quite frowning, the mother nods.  Black-eyed susans 
bloom on the stoop.  Walking down to the bottom 
of the hill, the girl lets the birds do the singing.  
Jean Preston


Hill Street

Scott
					, reviewed by Jill

 Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering        313 
Book Reviews
White Ink: 
Poems on Mothers and Motherhood 
Rishma Dunlop, ed. 
Toronto: Demeter Press, 2007.
 
Reviewed by Jill Scott
Let me begin by saying that it is a decadent indulgence, almost a guilty plea-
sure, to review such a sumptuous collection of poems celebrating the maternal 
—dressed here in her finest garb. Reading such poetry is nourishment on the 
same scale as mother’s milk and I feel mothered by this gorgeous anthology. 
Beyond the sheer beauty of its contents, White Ink is without doubt of historic 
and political significance. The censure of the maternal in our culture is real 
and the impediments to mothers who want to write are great. We should 
not underestimate the courage and determination necessary for mothers to 
squeeze time out for writing. Editor Rishma Dunlop only hints at her own 
challenges as a young mother and a poet, stealing away to tap at her keyboard 
when her daughters were in bed. 
The title, White Ink, pays homage to the theorists of écriture feminine, 
most notably Hélène Cixous, who inspired a whole generation of women to 
write their bodies in all their sensuous corporeality. But this anthology goes 
far beyond any theoretical paradigm of the maternal. It is wide-ranging in its 
expressions of mothering, inviting men into the conversation and extending 
the maternal beyond the physical and emotional —birthing, breastfeeding, 
nurturing, teaching, loving, suffering (“if I defer the grief I will diminish the 
gift” Eavan Boland)—to include adoption, infertility, abortion, abuse, racism, 
and queer mothering, but also men and women honouring their mothers (“I 
touch the deep floor of your heart!” Mahmoud Darwish), mothers at their 
worst (“My mother, drunk again, her nightgown pulled up to her hips” Patrick 
Lane), and the mother tongue (“She is shaping a motherland in her mouth” 
Yerra Sugarman). 
Dunlop includes a full spectrum of ethnically diverse voices, some poems 
in translation, well-known authors, both Canadian (Brandt, Brossard, Carson, 
Crozier, Godard, Lane, Layton, Marlatt, Musgrave) and American (Ginsberg, 
Hacker, Plath, Rich, Sexton), and lesser-known poets. Still, the volume does 
not feel at all forced or driven by either diversity or theme. Instead, the col-
lection soars in the analogic links that thread together the various sections, 
cryptically and tantalizingly named after lines of verse rather than recognizable 
categories: “a woman leaning from a painting offering a life” (Nina Bogin), 
or “all the rivers of her red veins move into the sea” (Irving Layton), or “the 
sound of your blood crossed into mine” (Minnie Bruce Pratt). 
Dunlop cleverly weaves the volume together as if it too were a poem. 
314        Volume 10, Number 1
Book Reviews
But White Ink is not just a poem; it is a mothering poem. As such, Dunlop 
offers her own take on the ineffable oneness of mothering, while at the same 
time hooking these rhythms and rhymes together through surprising and sur-
reptitious correspondences. Mothering is expanded into a welcoming canvas, 
indeed a vast landscape—these lovingly gathered verses enable readers to col-
lectively imagine the maternal as a cultural discourse that goes well beyond 
actual mothers and becomes an attitude or a disposition of compassion that 
has often been silenced. 
One could complain that the quality is uneven, but there is very good 
reason to include all expressions of the maternal, even the rough ones. Further, 
one could say that there is in these postwar poems a lack of formal sophistica-
tion, and yet the counterargument would be that such creative configurations 
of maternity cannot be contained within traditional genres (visions of swollen 
breasts and bellies bulging out from the sonnet’s quatrains come to mind). 
Minnie Bruce Pratt writes of breaking the mould, “all the poets I knew / were 
men, dads eloquent on their sleeping / babes and the future,” but Miranda 
Pearson reminds us that “this was my true self / emerging.” This volume 
midwives such selves. 
There are some institutional issues that deserve to be addressed. For all 
her importance as a postwar poet who introduced maternal themes, there is 
only one poem by Sylvia Plath, likely because the citation rights are so expen-
sive. The cost of the volume is another concern. At $39.95, this is a book that 
will be available for the most part only in academic libraries, away from the 
very women—mother-poets living on a shoestring—who could revel in these 
rhythms. One more minor quibble—the book is quite a tome, difficult to tuck 
into a purse or balance on a pillow. Such a lovely collection ought to be dressed 
in handier attire. These minor details aside, White Ink is a tour de force and a 
superb contribution to both the politics and the poetry of mothering. 


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Re-Constituting Care: A Rights-Based Approach to Disability, Motherhood, and the Dilemmas of Care