mothers – Jenny Wren

A mother’s love isn’t always guaranteed

The flowers are the electric yellow of margarine. These blooms are the technicolor adverts in glossy women’s magazines telling me I can hardly believe they aren’t butter.

Momma collected women’s magazines and spread them across the coffee table like a bouquet, but I never saw her read one. Momma had no time for things like reading. Instead, they collected dust until years later an adolescent me peeked inside to decipher my own womanhood.

Yellow flowers made Momma happy. Yellow was the color of the sunflowers that made Momma think of her childhood home in Kansas. Momma loved that home and Momma hated that home. Even at three years old, I knew these simple truths.

I was always wary of Momma.

My mother’s fears imprisoned me

The world, from my earliest memories, was made of forest paths that led to dark woods, full of wolves and witches. I knew that the glowing windows of the houses up the hill held ballrooms and gentlefolk being plagued by curses and intrigue. In the corner of every room lurked a Georgie Porgie ready to make me cry, or worse.

I was not yet five, but I had memorized nearly every nursery story my father read to me. Every damsel in distress, every rhyme, every Victorian moral that they contained. My impressionable young mind devoured each new tale as a guidebook to navigating the adulthood I was constantly reminded was my eventual lot.

Never mind that the forest paths that terrified and tempted me were little more than wooded verges separating tract homes from strip malls.

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Tag Archives: mothers

I Remember In Flowers

A mother’s love isn’t always guaranteed

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My mother’s fears imprisoned me