My Mother, the Alchemist

Before I was born, my parents couldn’t pick a name for me.

My mother told me I was a womb full of questions, at once her companion and a stranger shifting softly inside her body. She did not know my sex, my potential, or anything else about me - but she believed in the possibilities of life, and she diligently took shots of insulin each day so that I could one day believe in them, too.

She dreamt me up one Summer night and gave birth to me in the Fall. The dream was a caul, a thin veil around me that bore, at last, a name.

She says that the dream was small, just one sentence: Emily is coming. My name was a seed, and she grew it to life until it put down roots and emerged from the safe soil of her stomach as a child, as me. As her daughter, who shared secrets with her from the very first moment.

And that was the first thing my mother taught me, that questions put down roots and grow into answers when they’re ready, that the best secrets live in the space between two eyes meeting for the first time.

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My mother grew up quiet. She talked better to animals than people, and they were the ones who listened most earnestly to what she had to say. A few crooked lines - some teeth out of alignment, some unruly hair that was always looking for room to grow - made people frown and call her names.

Animals do not care about crooked lines. Trees are made of them, and rivers dance through the shapes they bring to life. Crooked things are semicolons; they are the signposts that tell you the journey is not done. Still growing, they say, still becoming something more.

This is the second thing my mother taught me, that people do not always understand the truths they already know, the ones buried deep and grown organic in nature’s untended soil. People think they want hedgerows, but it’s the unruly forest that they need.

Animals know it from the start. People figure it out along the way.

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I grew up bold, loud the way a quiet woman’s daughter often is. Like my mother, I talked to animals, too, but also to people and paper and stones. She told me that this was right, and joyful, and good.

I got called the same names that she did and she taught me to wear them like a crown. Weird girl, nature girl, stranger. I brought her box turtles and seashells, berries and pieces of wood with patterns made by worms. She transformed them into subjects and gemstones, treasures and scepters with which to rule kingdoms and thrones.

Here was the third lesson from my mother, to make worlds in my own image and hers, to turn taunts into poems through this strange transmutation. My mother is an alchemist. She taught me to ply her trade.

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Cancer is not a thing, but a process. It is a dark journey that you don’t know you’re on until, by chance, someone tells you about the detour you took some while back, a left turn when you meant to go right. A shortcut to a place you didn’t want to go.

My mother taught me once, then twice that some journeys can only be witnessed, that there are places where companions cannot go with you, no matter how badly they wish they could.

She taught me that there’s grace hiding in the cracks between bathroom tiles at two in the morning when you’re sick and nauseous, that it’s somewhere in the follicles of hair drifting gently down from head to floor. First in strands, then clumps thick as cut grass.

My mother, the alchemist, is also a prophet - we’ll get through this, she ordained, we caught it early, lucky us. As if we were on the same journey, me and her, our blisters and bruises still shared by osmosis in the womb.

If she had not said it, would it still be true? I believe her words have power, even when she does not. It was the first time I kept a secret from her. I’m scared, mom, but if I say what I’m scared of then it might have power, too. Even so, I think she knew, I think she always knows.

She taught me that there are words crowding inside of silences, that healing isn’t always elegant and it sure doesn’t feel like healing, most of the time - but that’s okay, really. Hair grows back and long nights over the toilet pass away eventually. People injecting you with poison can become friends and saviors. Some pills are bitter, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth taking.

These lessons compound, solidify with time. Cancer is the process of life gone awry and turned toward death. But my mother is a sorceress, and she knows which sacrifices must be made for the magic spells to work. She took the breasts that fed me and smoothed them out. She erased a small part of her masterpiece, leaving a soft blank space for new art to be drawn.

From her I learned that we are made of parts but none of them make us; scars heal over and let us know we’re alive. Sometimes what’s missing is a badge of honor. Sometimes a blank canvas is much prettier than what it might become.

This lesson gives me shelter when I’m lost at sea. My mother, captain, steers me to new shores when the old ones are gone. She taught me to be grateful for the journey, even when I must sew new sails to make it home.

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My mother stopped being quiet when the time was right. There are times when her voice is louder than her words, when her alchemy requires more fire than water to make it work. Her prophecies can be dire if not fulfilled.

From her I am learning that my voice is more than noise. She teaches me that silence is both more and less than action. When you truly believe in something, you dream it into life one season at a time. You do not need to know its name or sex: you only need to know it’s there.

My mother teaches me that forgiveness can be tempered by temper, but it’s still forgiveness nonetheless. Healing often looks like sickness if you’re not familiar with the signs. And if love at times looks crooked, well, that’s only because it’s growing into something more. Treasure it as it is, let it be unruly and a bit unhinged.

Mother lessons are the lessons of life. They become what we are when our own strangers are born, when we know their names and remember the dreams that foretold them.

If motherhood is more forest than garden, that’s all the better. My mother reminds me each day that what we want and what we need are often both found the moment we stop looking for them. She found me in the Summer but did not know me until the Fall. I was looking for her before my name, when all I was could be summed up in the curled tail of a question mark.

My mother taught me what magic is. It is born from the womb of dreams.