Dragonbread, & Other Things Our Mothers Couldn't Teach Us

Since I was 5 years old, my mother has always lived in another state. I would visit some holidays and parts of the summer, but there was distance, and there were naturally those things of day-to-day living that she could not pass on to me. When, finally, after college I followed her permanently to California where she eventually settled, our states of difference had transferred from the physical plane to the spiritual. Once I asked her, as I watched her cook her famous pot roast with gravy the way my German grandfather had taught her, if she wasn't just a bit disappointed that she couldn't pass on her knowledge of traditions to her Hindu, vegetarian daughter. She smiled a bit as she said with just a hint of hesitation, "Yes." All I could do in response was to nod. The loss is felt both ways, I suppose. My mother couldn't teach me the things I wish I could have learned from her. Nor can I learn from her now the things she wishes she could teach me.


Suddenly, Chandra, Maria, and I are standing in my kitchen with the colossal task before us of making something none of us had ever made before. Doesn't it seem like the making of bread should be one of the most fundamental skills a human could know? The word bread is used symbolically to represent all that sustains us -- both physically as well as spiritually. And here we stood, intimidated by the most natural undertaking. The irony of it taking the form of a dragon did not elude me -- we were confronting the dragon of our yeasty fears. I suspect what rescued us was the inner wisdom we have that comes to our aid when we plunge forward with confidence and valor. With the attitude, "I can." Though we may tremble before the fiery breath of the oven that threatens to char our feeble attempts, there is the calm self -- the universal Mother in us that truly is passed down through the generations -- that knows the rhythms of the earth, and knows how to tame the wild, dark things of the world. By acting as though we knew what we were doing, though our biological mothers never taught us these things, we played "make-believe" in the unknown abilities in us, and quietly tamed the unruly dragon of doubt. 

One thing that drew me so strongly to Waldorf education from the beginning was its rich celebration of rites of passage. I covered a lot of ground in my life searching here and there for some kind of rite of passage for all of the disjointed parts of myself; also, probably, searching for the "mother" who could guide me through them. At one time, my journey took me to the Navajo reservation for several months, where I befriended a woman who became for me, temporarily, the mother figure I was looking for. She told me stories of how Navajo girls are welcomed into womanhood by the community. In the pre-dawn of her special day, the child rises in the dark and runs as long as she can in the direction of the rising sun. And when she returns, all of the women elders gather around her in a circle and massage her limbs to help her grow strong -- and, I imagine, to pass on to her their own maternal energies, their great spirit. And later, her mother takes a special brush, and brushes blessings into her long hair. 



She told me these stories just before I left the reservation. I had intended to return, and she promised that, if I brought back with me a special brush, she would gladly brush my hair. It hasn't happened yet, and more than ten years have passed. But I feel that I no longer need it. This was before I became a mother, and now I can't imagine any rite of passage more convincing than this. And, I am learning by being a part of this community. Watching how our children are nourished and nurtured. How they are taught to weave ritual into their daily rhythms. How rites of passage are woven naturally into the passages of the seasons so tied to our human struggles and emotions. Their lives are rich with the wisdom of the ages, whispered in song, in play, in the struggles to gain control over their still-new bodies to paint, knit, bake, play flute, dance, write, sculpt, and draw. I am proud, and amazed, that my daughter can do things that I cannot do. And if, somewhere and somehow, our traditions have been lost, or have come too late and become too incompatible, if I feel I have nothing to pass on to my daughter from generations past, I can now join her on this path toward remembrance of all that we already have within us. And I can know that in this way we are not walking astray, but are turning back to the source -- to the wisdom and wholeness that has been scattered from so much disassociation with the earth and with our "mothers". Opening to the wisdom within, which is my own -- and my daughter's -- birth right, I feel more and more the connection I had been seeking with my own mother... with all mothers.