Tiger

I'm a little late posting today and have actually just arrived home from a short vacation in Yosemite. I took my two little boys and left their sister and father behind. I had planned to write something beforehand, something about what it feels like to take a vacation without one's special needs child. But I didn't get around to it and will hopefully post it next month! In the meantime, I've gone through my "archives" and selected this. It seems apropos -- especially given that I saw many wild creatures over the last few days -- none of whom, I'd add, compare to our ferocity.

This was written about one year or so ago.

Comparing oneself to a tiger is trite stuff, but I'm going to do it. I am a tiger and not the sexy kind. This morning, Sophie woke up and had her usual bout of seizures. I felt angry about it, really angry. Ferocious, actually. I've yelled and screamed before, evenwhileSophie has been seizing. I'm always alone, of course, wild and free. It doesn't feel good at all, though, this unfettered energy. It's not a release. It's as if I'm a beast, a woman with only primitive urges. I hate the way I feel afterward. Sorry and ashamed in all my humanity.

I've been rereading Barbara Gill'sChanged by a Child - Companion Notes for Parents of a Child with a Disability, and wouldn't you know I'd open it to this page:

Tiger Mothers

...We hear, see and feel things others don't even notice. Our experience -- with its pain, vigilance, and hard work -- has heightened our senses when it comes to our child. It is as if we have developed extra nerve endings. We are tiger mothers -- ever watchful, ever ready -- tireless to protect, provide, defend.
Sometimes we sense that others are wary of us. They feel -- and fear -- the great power within us, the fire burning in our eyes. We are tuned in to something extra, something they don't hear.

You might think that I'm proud of or happy to be a tiger. And I think most mothers have it in them to be tigers -- whether it's ever unleashed or not is beside the point. But what struck me about that passage was the sentence "Sometimes we sense that others are wary of us. They feel -- and fear -- the great power within us, the fire burning in our eyes." I am sad, sometimes, that I have become this tiger because in becoming full of fire and strength I have lost someone else. I am out of balance, my yin overcome by yang.

My fears and worries about Sophie are eclipsed by love, though, and this love is unreasonable, in a way. It's unreasonable to experience these things for over thirteen years, so unreasonable that it must be love that carries me forward.

I studied William Blake, the poet, in college and learned a lot about him from a dear person I knew a long time ago. But to round out the tiger cliche, I find it fitting to include Blake's famous poem here:

Tiger Tiger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger Tiger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Comments

[Mary]

Elizabeth -- I read this post a while back, and it really resonated with me. I even drafted a comment that for some reason I never posted, and managed to find it now. Here it is:

I've been thinking about this post for a week now. I never knew it, but of course I am a tiger mama. People are definitely wary of the passion, determination and anger they see mostly simmering and sometimes boiling over in me. I have to be a tiger, especially around the food issues with PWS, but I do grieve it, and get angry about the burden of always watching, knowing, protecting. It’s good to know I am not really alone in feeling this way.

But what struck me even more about this post is that for the last 2-3 years my 10 year old has been depicting himself as a tiger in his artwork. Over and over again the tiger shows up, sometimes tiger features drawn over his own image. I'd never made the connection before, hadn't even gotten around to asking him about it. He never talks about tigers or expresses interest in learning about them. But, as the older sibling, he is incredibly perceptive and protective, and so very angry at times about his brother's disability. He is obviously a fierce tiger too. Oh how I wish I could relieve him of that.

Thanks for the beautiful thought-provoking post.

Mary

[MiaHysteria]

What a wonderfully, descriptive and accurate account of what we experience inside as parents of special needs children. I'll be posting about this on the 25th, and linking back here.

Thank you.

[J.]

Sometimes in the day to day bustle of being a tiger mama we neglect to notice the beauty - thanks for the reminder.

[karen]

This piece explains something that I experienced for just about 10 months, not 14 years, as you have. I never thought of it this way, but I now know that same Tiger-mother is within me, and what you said about others fearing it is true. I believe they also fear the circumstances that brought it out in us, and that is the source of many of the inane comments that are made to us as we live the wild, jungle-life that we have been given.

Sophie and your boys are blessed by your utterly passionate love for them - I am certain of that. And when you live with depths and heights like those of the jungle, it seems only natural that you would need to let out some primal, screaming energy now and then. Your honesty about your feelings after you've had an outburst is refreshing, but from my perspective, there is nothing shameful about pent-up energy being let out; the pressure has to go somewhere, doesn't it?

I love your thoughts, your heart and your writing.

[cms8741]

I will never read Blake, or any poet, the same way again. I've read this poem at least a dozen times, and only now with the insight that you provided, did I nearly cry.