Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

I have taken to hiding a small ceramic bowl that I use for most of my meals on the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet. This is so my mother’s aide doesn’t use it for my mother’s meals. This is silly. It’s a bowl, though it’s special because a friend’s daughter made it and gifted it to me for helping her with her writing. I’m being petty. For goodness’ sake, I wasn’t using it at the time—I wasn’t even home. I only know that it is being used because sometimes it’s on the drainboard when I come home and my mother says, yes, May served her meal in it.

I will let this go, after I have dealt with it.

Being petty, as we know, can feel consequential, because little things are often big things in not-so-great disguise.

When I taught my students about symbolism, there was always the explanation of an object in all its physical reality and the myriad ways that very same object could be understood, felt, or related to.

This bowl is a wonderful vessel for salads, stews, and pasta, since its small size enables for (practically) guilt-free refills. It also represents me as separate from my mother. It represents the person who is living a share-free existence in some alternative reality.

But is that really the universe where I want to be living?

I ask this as I sit around the table with my Monday morning writing group. We are in this coffee shop using this quiet hour to write without the distractions that come when we are home, and with the tacit support that comes from others who also spend their time putting ideas to paper for the glory, the fame, the riches—HA!—no, the need to express what is inside. Space is shared. I’m here because sometimes I don’t want to be physically alone when I’m writing.

In the past two years, my mother has become a little old lady. I am her support; she depends on me. That is the reality. Keeping a bowl for just me neither changes that nor does it trick me into thinking that I live alone. Nor do I want it to be living alone, at least now, when it’s more important to share my life. Sitting with these other writers, I’m experiencing the benefit of being together. It’s not always necessary to move aside to be separate from others; it could be to breath fully alongside others who are also trying to breath fully.

This is why writing is important to me. Having worked through my thoughts in this essay, I now feel ready to stop hiding the bowl. I won’t even talk to the aide and tell her never, ever, ever use it. Although, I will not, ever, serve my mother anything in it. When I’m home, it’s still mine.