Mama-gram

A few years ago I listened to a voicemail from my mother in which she sounded strangled by fear--she is in the middle of clearing her throat when the voicemail recording kicks in and I had to listen to it twice to know what that choking sound was: subtext. I meant to call her back immediately but conveniently forgot, so the following morning there was an email from her asking if I'd gotten her voicemail.  After the throat clearing, she had asked me to ask my friend Beth to ask her brother and his wife (both radiologists) what they thought about the new information on mammograms. I called my mom and said I would.

I didn’t really want to know what radiologists think about mammograms.  Offhand, I’d say radiologists seem…biased.  Ask me what I think about yoga.  What am I going to say?  “It’s not for everyone”?  No.  Anytime anyone ever asks me what I think about yoga, I say, “Everyone should do yoga every day.” 

So I make a mental note to ask the two radiologists, whom my mom has never even actually met, for their opinion on whether she should get a mammogram now, or in 18 months.  

After I commit to doing this, my mother pursues the conversation a little further, trying to get my opinion, I am puzzled to say, and my response is, “Are you…asking what I think about mammograms?” I am surprised, because she knows I am not a big advocate of western methods, but I am also lured, because I teach in mother-daughter circles that our breasts are our energetic attachment to our female lineage.  So here we are, my mother and I, attached, by breasts.  We have rarely if ever discussed them. My mother did not nurse me.  (An interesting minor detail is that we are at a bank—well, I am, but my mom is 1000 miles away and she is at the bank only by phone.  My dad was a banker for 20 years.  He built banks, for ten more.  He was all about banks. What a context for this conversation.  My parents are divorced, but my dad feels so present to me—since I’m at a bank.  Location, location. I recall that his mother, when she was 89 years old, went to the hospital for her annual mammogram, and was knocked over by an automatic door, and broke her hip!  But her breasts were fine.)

I pull out my car of the bank lot and reply, “Mom. Mammograms don’t save lives.  That is propaganda.  It’s marketing.  Of mammogram equipment.  Sometimes mammograms do find malignant breast lumps.  Sometimes they don’t.  Doctors are wined and dined by people who sell pharmaceutical equipment and meds.  I bet mammograms even actually create breast problems, because every time they give someone a false positive, that woman goes home and worries about her breasts for five long days until her follow-up appointment.”  Perhaps I was being too strident.

“Five days?” my mom says, “Five days? How about six months?” and I am appalled to learn that my mom has been worried sick (her words, not mine) for the last six months about her breasts, because six months ago, she had a false positive—it was only a fold in her breast tissue, they said, after the follow-up—but they advised her to return in six months rather than the usual year because maybe it wasn’t a false positive, maybe there was really something there, and she shouldn’t wait a whole year to find out--just six months. 

So, sitting on that level of dread, my mom heard the new information on tv saying women no longer need an annual mammogram; now you should get one only every two years.  But what about her?  What to do, in her case, already sitting on six months of worry, is her question.  Should she go in, so they could tell her it’s time to officially stop worrying?  Or to officially worry even more? 

I don’t have the answer.  It doesn’t seem like my answer to give.  I say nothing.

“Actually I don’t think I’m going to get breast cancer,” my mom remarks, spontaneously, almost as though she were changing topics. 

“I don’t either,” I say, relieved, and almost puzzled by how she could know this.  When I imagine my mother’s potential toxins…I imagine them in other locations. “You don’t fit in with the profile for women who get breast cancer,” I say, hoping she doesn’t ask me more about the profile, which is based completely on hearsay and intuition and Louise Hay.  “And we don’t have any breast cancer in our family at all, right?” I continue, “so I think your breasts are fine.” 

“I do too,” she says conclusively.

“Well, great!” I say, “Your intuition is your mammogram.”

My mom is somewhat relieved, and then wants to chat about new furniture, and I let her, because I can.  I’m still driving…I have about four miles to listen to her hypothetical floor plan ideas.  Then, as I back into my garage, I make some effort to conclude, and we’re ready to say goodbye.  It had been a satisfying conversation; so many aren’t.  I say goodbye.

“Eat,” she says, out of the blue, the implication, I guess, being that I don’t.  My instinctive response would be:  I do eat.  So I tried something new.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m not going to eat until Saturday,” I teased.

“Well, how’s our Lily?” she asks, as if changing the subject.

“Lily is great.  She’s the happiest, healthiest person I know.”  Which is true.

“Well, do you really think she eats enough protein?  I don’t.” 

My instinctive response would be:  She gets plenty of protein.  So I go with the tease, again.  Knowing what I know about the creative power of my words, it does not bear repeating here because it was horrifying.  But my clever description of a teenager who doesn't eat protein disarmed her.

I assured her that her granddaughter is healthy.  My mother has regularly asked the protein question since Lily was one.  There is nothing I can say or do that would make my mom feel satisfied that Lily has gotten enough protein in the last 13 years.  Rather than continuing to try, to assure her and provide evidence of adequate protein intake, I was liberated by her words--I had an epiphany: that she is hanging onto us using a chain called “worry,” and rather than trying to convince her that there is no need to hang onto it, I could release my end.  It seems like only a minor release to, in turn, let go of any link I have unconsciously attached to my daughter, trusting that the Universe will support her with the resources she needs to be happy and successful on her own terms. No worries.

It all started because…breast milk apparently did not have enough protein, according to Lily’s grandmother.  If you look in my baby book that my mother diligently filled out for my first three years, until my brother was born, you will see that my first meal from a jar was...lamb.  When I was four days old.  She feels about meat the way I feel about yoga and Beth’s brother and sister-in-law feel about x-rays.  You should eat it. Every day. And my intention as a daughter and a mother and as a teacher of mothers and daughters, is to allow our difference in beliefs to coexist peacefully.

I sigh and remind myself that I teach moms to allow the Divine Feminine energy of our ancestry to be not a chain, but, simply, a mirror and a lens.  She mirrors for me a way that I don’t want to be. And I can, perhaps, be a new lens that helps her see the world. Or not.

Having released the rope that binds me to my mother’s happiness has allowed me to notice that she is not actually comfortable being happy.  She is not comfortable with any answer that doesn’t provide something to worry about.  My disarming tactic is to say the opposite of what I’ve been saying all my life.  I didn’t know what was going to happen the first time, or what will happen next time.  Shaking up the energy allows us to create something new.

There is nothing I need to do or change in regard to my interactions with my mother.  If you don’t want to rock the boat, there is no need.  But I am sort of a rocker of boats, so it’s hard not to go there.  What’s more important than that is to become acquainted with the dynamic and make sure I am not passing it down, un-evolved, to my daughter.