eaglesnest

Sidetracking on a tangential train of thought — I watched Juno last night, alone, while I designed a baby shower gift. It affected me enough that I logged on to my on-line mama community to locate whatever discussion about the movie I had missed. I didn’t search our database far enough back in time & was bewildered to not find quite the flaming thread.

The women who are part of this community live in various walks of life, in many states & provinces, and even overseas. They are single mamas , coupled mamas, married mamas, divorced mamas, gay mamas, yo mamas. They are mamas who have had abortions, who are adopted, who are adopting , who are birth mothers with contact to the adoptive families of their children & who are in contact with the birth mamas of children they have/are adopting.

These women make me proud on a high frequency — proud of how they mother, proud to be part of their circle of friends & family, and proud of the next generation as is being raised by these women.

These women surely have wonderful thoughts & issues about this movie & its treatment of teen pregnancy & adoption. And I wanted them all awake & engaged in it with me at 2 a.m. pdt.

I had to settle for writing a little “placeholder” of thoughts and go to bed. When I got up this morning, one mama had kindly linked me to the months old thread. I had enough time in my hectic day {of last minute prep for the baby shower I am co-hostessing tomorrow for a young irl mama friend who is having her second child in 5 weeks} to read thru most of it.

Because we are sisters, I talk to some of these mamas on a regular, if not daily basis, so I was able to discuss the movie, the characters, the quick basics briefly before running out to “use too much of the daylight” as my son said. It was good for the moment to voice some thoughts & hear others, to begin processing. Yet, I am still unsettled.

Having been born to a teen mother who had a very very different environment & decision making process than Juno gives me one perspective to the movie & its topic. Being a mother to 3 teen daughters adds some other unusual prism angles to my pov.

Plus, I had been introspective and delving into some serious issues in my life that were brought about due to having had a teen mother who was pressured into marrying an abusive man just before I watched Juno. To admit to crying during the movie is forgone. To say I was disturbed is an underwhelm, as DK says.

I tried to talk to my nearly 18 year old daughter about the movie. She had seen it before & was desperate to see it again. I asked her today, why or what she liked about it.

I will broach topics,  feel her out for how far we need to talk shit out. Mostly, I find she is not emotionally mature enough to handle some heavy duty talks. Having attempted before, at great length, to do so over some touchy topics between us — she is Pro-Life to a fault & I am Pro-Choice - I pretty much know when not to exert myself too much.

I was still vulnerable from the things I thought about last night (per previous blog) and when she gave a standard teen answer “it was funny,” I only took one more step to discussion. The reply - “I was glad, of course, she didn’t get an abortion.”  No mother/daughter dialogue today.

PSHEW!!!

 After not much of anything about it, I am not far from where I stood last night as I turned off the lights & went to stand, thinking, beneath the hot shower.

At least, I am not crying tonight.

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