archive Maricris Perez: To Daughter, from a Greek Mom

Mar 19, 2010 9:39 PM

Maricris Perez: To Daughter, from a Greek Mom

by Pinaywriter

Maricris Perez: To Daughter, from a Greek Mom

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To Daughter, from a Greek MomShare
Today at 9:20pm
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, but it is impossible to find it elsewhere...


I didn’t try to touch my daughter.
She glided down and sat next to me on the singed wicker chair.
“What happened?” I asked her. “Did the one you love hurt you?”
“No. But I’m afraid he will leave me.
There are so many girls all the time.”
“What makes you think he wants any of them?”

My daughter looked up.
“I am not a goddess,” she said.
“You are.”

I sighed.
This is what I told her.

I have been young too.
I have been Psyche: radiant and innocent, one who once doubted Love but sought to claim Love…
I have been Echo, who let Love resound around and follow her everywhere her feet trod…
I have been Eurydice: experienced love, redeemed by Music, but forsaken by longing…
I have been Persephone too, like you, snatched from youth by the wily charms of the will to Love…

Yes, I too thought I was not a goddess;
My mother WAS the goddess.
Now I am Demeter, like my mother,
Because of you.

My Demeter tried to save me from Hades
But that man you have is Eros too
I let my Eros, your father, leave
Because I didn’t think I was enough.

But you must remember,
YOU ARE EVERYTHING.
We all are.

You know what?
Psyche means SOUL.
What more is there than that?
Echo never stops her singing;
Maybe it was Eurydice’s choice to fade away
when Orpheus looked back
so she did not have to return with him.

Persephone is a goddess of the bridge between
Light and dark
Day and night
Death and life
And everything that likens
And differentiates
Longing and Love.

After that transpired, it was as if I was a fountain,
A great spout of miracles , flowing with words such as these:
“When your mothers tell you to love and appreciate your body
It isn’t just to get you to shut up;
They know that when you are old you are going
to feel exactly the same way inside that you do now;
We try on different dresses,
Different selves,
Different goddesses...

But our souls?
Always the same.
Always ongoing,
Light to the brim."

AS I was thinking this, my daughter,
As all daughters are wont,
Drifted away, flying to the cadence of her own music,
Her pretty cacophony;
And I was left alone…
…
…
Till I felt a hand at my waist.
I did not move; I just swayed,
Felt the music as I felt the pressure of fingertips beneath my ribcage.
so I remembered how,
When I had been Persephone, Hades had popped a rib out
as if trying to get better access to my heart.
The thing is, what would he have done if he actually held it in his hands?
What would any man have?

But this man with me,
Hades had not come to claim me.
Eros.
Love that grew old, hair shocks of gray,
Nothing much left of that power of youth that screamed,
“Power, Cosmos, God, Goddess’ Son, Chaos.”
Now he was just a man, getting older.

But he was also my Love,
And he had my music,
The flow of my dance,
My secret, my storyteller.

He had been a god, yes.

But then again,
I am a storyteller, and a goddess too.
Shod in a new dress,
But still the same old Soul.