Happy Smother’s Day!

Friday before Mother’s Day a surprise package arrived from my friend Saydi, who lives in Boston. Inside were all kinds of crafts and projects for the kids, some cd’s for Eliza, and a copy of an essay that accompanied this beautiful print Saydi had placed in a frame. It is one of William Blake’s artistic plates from his Book of Urizen (circa 1796). It is called Teach These Souls to Fly.

In college, I was fascinated by Blake’s mix of art and poetry. I loved Songs of Innocence and Experience. But I’d never seen this plate before.

It’s been floating around the blog world lately. Shawni @ 71 Toes gave it a shout-out (Saydi’s sister), but I didn’t have time to read about it. Saturday night, however, I sat down on the couch, artwork next to me, and read Lia Collings essay. It comes from this book. (For a chance to win a copy, visit Saydi’s blog.)

Lia begins with a train ride across the German countryside, her baby in her lap. As they bump along, her sister hesitatingly asks, “Why would anyone want to be a mom? How do you bear the monotony… no matter what you try to do, you have these kids in the way?!”

Plate 2 of ‘Urizen’: ‘Teach these Souls to Fly’ 1796 William Blake 1757-1827 Purchased 1922

This plate by Blake provided an answer. Lia writes,

“The beige muscles swelling across the mother’s back inspired my admiration first. A woman with such strength could perform any labor she chose. Yet the curve of her shoulder introduced a steady softening that ended in a touch on the child’s elbow. I saw the same combination of force and persuasion in the look she gave her child. This mother seemed in the same instant both to command and to invite, to compel and to persuade. I found the odd trajectory of the mother’s flight as intriguing as the paradoxes of her person. The was definitely flying – that was clear by the way her robes hugged her body before swirling away. But her torso twisted back toward her child.”

She continues to explain how someone like her sister might only see the woman as hampered and restrained. “What heights could such a woman not have attained, had she been free to pursue the course she had started?”

But to Lia, this mother was using her reserves, her capacities and abilities, not just for herself, but to elevate her child. To teach her child how to fly alongside her.

Oddly enough, the child stared, not at his mother, but toward her. Blankly.

“While his mother seemed wholly devoted to some noble end, the child appeared merely present. This child flew only because his mother pulled him, but like most children, he seemed oblivious to what his mother did for him.”

As I read more and examined the painting, I thought of all the flexing, bending, lifting and guiding we do as mothers. How we are always curving toward our children. How it is hard sometimes to keep them afloat, to make sure they are equipped for both success and struggle. Lia observes that the painting is not particularly beautiful or technically impressive, but the longer she looked at it, the more she responded to it.

I had a similar reaction. As I thought of my children. And then my own mother, and what she set aside to raise six children. She set aside some dreams. Some desires she wanted to pursue. But instead, funneled all her energy into teaching us how to fly.