Awakening by Mary Lane Potter
Painting by Miriam Zora Engel (author’s daughter)
“Do you know what dust is?” my twelve-year-old daughter asks, looking up from her biology homework. Her voice swells with the power of knowing and the promise of youth.
“Something that makes you sneeze?” I say absentmindedly. “A breeding ground for mites?”
“It’s way gross.”
“The curse of housekeeping foisted on women? Eternal punishment? Like that damn rock the gods condemned Sisyphus to push up that hill every blessed day—all because he dared to think he, a mere mortal, was somebody too?”
“Mom! Please. Not everything’s about sexism. Listen to me. It’s dead skin! From dogs, cats, people! Each human body sheds 40,000 old skin cells a day, so there’s tons of it, dead pieces of people and animals, everywhere. She opens her arms wide and swirls them, turning side to side. “We breathe it!”
I stop mincing the ginger for our weekly stir fry to watch her dance her disgust. My breath catches. She is beautiful in her passion, her body unafraid to show the world what she knows, who she is. Too quickly she stops and hunches over the kitchen table again, on to the next discovery.
Between us, in the late afternoon sun streaming through the window, dust particles drift in unseen currents, shifting with the slightest breath, like a bride’s floating veil, a diaphanous shroud. Stirred up, they glide through the light, each mote shining with the memory of being, each desiccated remnant singing I was alive once. I belonged to a larger, luminous whole. I moved with grace and purpose. I was moist and soft, strong and resilient, ready to expand or contract to protect what was inside, what was most precious.
I want to join this sacred chorus, this cloud of witnesses, say to this wondrous girl before me, sure in herself and hard at work, I was like you once, awash in wonder, in love with the world, tingling with power and possibilities, moving freely, sure of belonging to a welcoming whole, alive in my body, my mind, my spirit, alive in every cell of my being.
I want to give her a gift that will unfold with her life, pour words of blessing over her, like a fairy godmother. Honor your splendorous being, always. Never believe you are less worthy than another. Stay awake to the deadening force of expectations, the prison of ideals, the stealth temptations of virtuous love. Know when to sacrifice—and when not. Let it be your skin you shed over and over, never yourself.
But before I can speak, the sun withdraws its light and the motes disappear, return to forgetting and silence. And I with them. In the emptiness left behind, I can feel myself dimming, dwindling once again into the steadfast wife, the selfless mother, a woman unseen. “I love you,” I say softly, as I toss the ginger into the sizzling oil. But whether I’m talking to my daughter or to myself, I cannot tell.
Mary Lane Potter’s books include Strangers and Sojourners: Stories from the Lowcountry (Counterpoint Press) and the novel A Woman of Salt (Counterpoint Press). Her essays have appeared in Parabola, Witness, River Teeth, Tiferet, Tablet, SUFI Journal, Minerva Rising, ARTS, and more. Author website