The evening before our DIA Beacon excursion, I was a bit anxious. I think I was subconsciously preparing for an encounter–I was having disturbing dreams…
In my dreams I was wandering through exhibition space from exhibition space with my fellow classmates ( gee, wonder why I was dreaming about that? 😉 and it was getting strange and mazelike, I was turning corner after labyrinthine corner until I was alone wandering through some kind of twisted art museum funhouse. I entered a white room with a group of strangers ( evil museum staff? ) trying to guide me into a dark room that I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see.
They tried to tempt me anyway: “Your mother is in there,” one of them said. I knew it was a lie. My mother has been dead for 8 months. It angered me that they said it…yet, the room was so dark and on some level I was worried… What if it was true?
I tried to act tough. I stood up to them. “Have her come out here then!!” I yelled as loud as I could, so loudly I woke myself up, and one of my roommates (sorry JL)!
When I encountered Louise Bourgois’ ode to her mother, Crouching Spider, (2003), at DIA, I knew what my dream meant. Bourgois said that she was exploring both the nurturing protector and predatory aspects of motherhood.
I have stopped looking for my mother. Yet, as I was moved to tears in the presence of this larger than life arachnid, I realized I have not forgiven her–I’m still angry, so angry she was ill, angry she didn’t protect me, angry she abandoned me…time after time. I’m also relieved– that she’s gone, and I don’t have to mother her anymore. What kind of daughter does that make me? What kind of mother? Now, that’s a scary thought.