What Isn’t There

Tanya Stahler
Nov 6 · 2 min read

As a child I was fascinated by literature that showcased mothers as a central or supporting characters. Without much consideration, I always regarded them with the mild fondness one bestows mythical creatures; a feeling generated by the implicit understanding that “mother” symbolizes love, safety, and feminine heroism.

But like fairies and dragons, I didn’t perceive them as anything more than fictitious. ‘Mom’ was a concept, not a person; an abstract schema I was capable of knowing but never able to apply.

Mothers were for other people.

The storybooks offered a dream with a heartbeat, and I wanted in. I wanted, in memory, what was described on the page: a faint silhouette endlessly flickering on the familial stage; a tight, sweet-smelling embrace to recover from a fall; a high-pitched sneeze from the excess of flour dusted from an apron. I imagined her as an enduring, quaint, magnanimous creature; a tender fighter with her greatest weapon being fierce love.

I never felt jealous — just deficient.

The mother in my life had presented herself as more of a reckless sister than devoted protector, and such little parallel left me without resentment. How could I demand someone to be something I never thought they were?

Instead, I reserved the blade of grievance for my father.

Unlike the character incompatibility my mother had shown, my father had studied his part and wore it well. But I couldn’t keep him, and he left in my hands the memories of fishing trips, birthdays, and parent-led school projects. Such a gift meant they weren’t his to care about or miss; they were mine to visit as consolation for losing a father.

His disappearance was not by accident or old age, but by will.

Rejection is like removing a necessary bone, imposing a mild limp on a body that needs to run. The bright but narrow visions of paternal warmth left over from my dad’s brief tenure would cool to a splintering ice, preserving my resentment. It wasn’t fatherhood he chose to dismiss, it was me.

His weekly visits with my sister remind me that I must have deviated from his idea of lovable cherub early on, and that my obsession with mothers may have blinded me to his growing disappointment and gradual exit.

The memories I want of my mother don’t exist, but the posturing love my father gave is a fact I wish I could disassemble and lose to the soft wind of forgetting.

I would have welcomed a brother and the paradise of imagining what I don’t remember.

Tanya Stahler

Written by

Unconventional mother. Race director and writer for Inside Trail Racing. Suspended biology career to better feed myself to each of my three kids.

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