This is what they don't see

When you give everything you have and still feel unseen

My favorite self-portrait, taken with my cell phone camera. I’m gazing wistfully out my bedroom window on a spring afternoon, shortly after turning 40. Circa 2021

I drafted the essay below in the immediate aftermath of a verbal altercation between me and my teen daughter. When I say immediate, it’s literal: I walked out of the kitchen and instantly sat at my desk to pour out my heart.

What happened was this nugget of a phrase—ghost mother—emerged during my stream-of-consciousness writing, and something about it seemed striking.

Through several conversations with women (and one man), I realized that ghost mother was more than a phrase. It was a construct, a reality that encapsulated the myriad experiences of women, both specifically and universally.

Ghost mother is more than a metaphor. It’s a way of seeing, naming, and illuminating the invisible. A ghost mother is:

• present but unseen in the cultural narrative of motherhood;

• straddling roles between motherhood and career identities, often with one overshadowing the other;

• perceptive and intuitive, able to “shine a blacklight” on the ultraviolet truths of human and family conflict;

• a paradox-holder who can live in the tension of grief and beauty, presence and absence, longing and contentment.

My role as connector in this community is to provide a safe, sacred space for mother-writers and those in complex maternal roles to gather, share, and grow together, with room for those whose experiences may not fit convention or tradition.

This is not a gatekept motherhood club but an orchard community, where different kinds of fruit can grow on the same tree.

This is what they don’t see

“You’re always gone!” my fourteen-year-old daughter Felicity shouts at me shortly before dinner. Ben, my husband of almost eighteen years, prepares his famous homemade pizza—chewy crust with rich sauce concocted from basil and Roma tomatoes our backyard garden yielded—and I sit, stunned, at the kitchen table. I have been zoning out for the last few minutes.

I feel heat rising in my neck, and it travels to my cheeks. My vision fades in and out of focus, and my head spins as if I am riding a merry-go-round. It’s all disorienting. I am angry, but it’s more than that. I feel small, insignificant, invisible. I don’t want to retort to my daughter, but she continues with her accusation that seems more like a trial.

I am always the defendant, and I have no lawyer to represent me.

“All you do is write! You’re never with the family!”

The steam in my kettle is about to whistle that tune of warning, and I can’t stop its release now. “What are you talking about? Dad was gone for several hours today. I was in our bedroom for one hour. Plus, I spent an entire day with you yesterday!”

Ben stands there, as he always does, saying nothing. It’s reminiscent of something decades old, but I’m not sure what. I fight the tears that threaten to reveal my vulnerability. With pursed lips and shoulders armored for an ambush, I prepare to bolt. At least I can try to flee this situation instead of endure another verbal assault.

“Yeah, but Dad deserves to get away. He works really hard,” Felicity continues, and this is the straw for me. It’s all I need to rise abruptly, stare at the linoleum floor, shove my chair into place, and storm toward my bedroom. What I hear in the distance is Ben telling Felicity, “Let’s just not talk about it, okay?” It’s not an admonishment, barely a reprimand. I wonder who is on whose side. Why are there sides taken, anyway?

No one follows me. To my knowledge, no one really notices I’m gone. At this juncture of the day, when golden streams of sunlight flicker through my window like mature blades of wheat in autumn, I don’t care. In fact, I am relieved. It’s good to be alone when I am emotionally activated. It means I can find a way toward safety and a return to equilibrium.

After I shut the door, I lock it for good measure. Next, I switch my heated blanket to a low setting, enough for warmth, enough to feel enveloped in a faux hug. It may not be in human arms, which is what I am desperate for, but it’s a close facsimile. Without much deliberation, I toss myself onto the bed, curl into the fetal position, and wrap the comforter around my body, leaving only enough room for my eyes and nose exposed.

Now the tears make their exit. These are leaden tears. I feel their weight as they drip from the corners of each eye—their stinging sorrow. They do not cascade rapidly down my cheeks, as sometimes happens. Instead, they linger for a beat, accumulating more of the toxicity I’ve stored in my body. Then, they become boulders that gain momentum and suddenly disappear into a valley.

There aren’t many tears this time, only a dozen or so. I’m not counting, just estimating. And the reason is that I’ve collected handfuls of tears throughout my life. They aren’t all the same. They don’t all feel the same, taste the same, smell the same. They don’t surrender themselves the same. It all depends on what I need to shed.

I’m still learning to let go.

I swallow the resistance to allow grief a place in my awareness. If I don’t feel this sadness, then I don’t have to think about why. About what happened and why I reacted this way. About how I don’t want to talk about it when I go back into the kitchen. I don’t know how to act, how to be.

Should I avert my gaze from Ben’s? Should I avoid looking at anyone and instead masticate my meal without words? Is it better for my silence to make its entrance today, rather than the rage roiling in my bloodstream? No, it’s not good for me to give everyone the cold shoulder. What would that teach my kids? But if I plaster a smile on my face, that is a contrivance. It’s phony. I can’t pretend that everything is fine when it isn’t.

As the sun streaks through maple leaves now turning to rust, goldenrod, and tangerine, warmth radiates on my cheeks, where my soggy burden falls in rivulets. Tears are my baptism. They cleanse me. But they also turn me inward, and I just want to bask for a moment in this late afternoon glow. I want to forget that the wounds never heal, that they are ripped and shredded again and again. Today it was the salt poured on them.

I advise myself against confronting Felicity, because she is nearing fourteen. When I was her age, my mom and I got into screaming matches. Or rather, I would scream, and she would slather me with guilt, like a thick layer of butter on Saturday morning French toast. Her tears were my burden. “How can you say something like that to me? After all I’ve done for you? Do you know how much I’ve sacrificed for you?”

And in an instant, I would turn my ire against myself. All I pummeled her with that belonged to her—that I wanted her to own—somehow pivoted to puncture my heart instead. I’ve carried that shame, and it became my interior fortress. But in the solace of this moment, I can tarry with the paradox of pain and peace: pain that churns my stomach from rejection and betrayal; peace from the benediction of the sun.

Ben raps on the door, three quick knock-knock-knocks. I do not stir. I pretend to be absent. His voice is muffled against the hard wood. “It’s dinnertime.” I don’t know whether he pauses for an answer or simply turns away. It doesn’t matter either way. I still feel diminished, small, inconsequential.

And I’m not ready to rejoin the living yet. My children are ravished, so I let them eat. I can hear the din of their merriment in the distance, and for a microsecond, I think, They don’t need me. They don’t even realize I’m gone. I’m fine to stay in here as long as I want.

Minutes later, Felicity taps lightly on the door. “Mom, it’s time to eat,” she says softly. So gently, in her sensitive way. I wonder how she can be oblivious to what she’s said and how unfair it is. I want to shriek, “Can’t you see all that I’ve done for you! All the sacrifices I make every day, all the hard work. I work just as hard as Dad does. Maybe more.”

That’s my mother’s voice, and I have worked hard to hush the edges of her criticism in the way I parent my children.

So I remain mute, and the rivers of anguish continue to pour forth as an offering, or maybe an incarnation, of what I have lived and lost these last thirteen years: childbirth five times in ten years, postpartum depression, and severe flare-ups of autoimmune conditions I never discuss with anyone, except my health care practitioners.

In the stillness of the day, as light wanes and gives way to impending nightfall, I decide I don’t have to eat. I can stay put for as long as I want, but the notion that I should pull myself together—fast—nags me. It’s a gnat I am trying to swat but keeps returning to irritate me. It won’t leave until I’ve squashed it flat.

While nestled in my cocoon of bedsheets and blankets, an epiphany flashes in my psyche: Ben didn’t defend me. He didn’t tell Felicity, “Don’t talk to your mom that way, because she works really hard, too. I appreciate that you notice how hard I work, but please know that she does a lot for you and for the family, too.”

That’s the crux of it all: He rarely stands up for me. I’m the lone woman on an isolated peninsula, and my voice is seldom heard. In fact, when I do speak, I tend to become the target for conflict. Whoever is present, usually my family, flings the arrow from its bow. What I wish so desperately is that Ben would stand next to me, that he would shield me from the assaults, whether fair or not, hurled at me so frequently.

Today I am weary of it. Today my body tells me to hide.

I decide it’s enough wallowing, so I sniffle, throw off the covers, make my way to the master bathroom, and blow my nose. Hard. I dab my eyes with a cool, damp washcloth and take a swig of tap water. It’s enough to collect myself, at least for twenty minutes.

I pad into the kitchen, and Veronica says forlornly, “Mama, you look sad.” I tell her, “I am sad, V.”

She opens her arms and asks, “Do you want a hug?” And I can feel the tears welling in my eyes all over again, though I blink them away for now. This time it’s a flood of tenderness from my seven-year-old that springs my heart back to life.

I walk into her embrace and tell her, “I always love hugs from you.”

Ben and Joey remain at the table with Veronica and me. Ben says nothing, but I feel his eyes burn against my face. I know he steals a glance now and then. But…nothing. No question. No comment. No apology. No offer. Nothing.

It’s been this way for as long as I can remember.

Joey doesn’t have a clue what’s going on and attacks his pizza slice with gusto, then gulps some water to wash it down. He’s eager to get to the homemade pumpkin cookie Felicity made this afternoon. Treats are always an incentive with this growing boy.

And again, I am awash in this sadness, this deep-seated sorrow I can’t yet name. My family enjoys its togetherness without me, but I am a ghost to them. The Specter of Mother slips in between their shadows to change toilet paper, to refill hand soap, to prepare lunches, to load the dishwasher, to complete permission slips for field trips. This is why Felicity believes her father has earned his right to leave on a Sunday for a few hours and spend it in the woods of a friend’s home, but her mother should linger at home. Always.

A mother’s work is invisible. It is shadow work. It is often erased.

Should a mother retreat, whether it is to write in her study or take a few days outside the house to rejuvenate herself, there exists a tacit caveat. A mother should expect a scolding. But what I know right now is that if I hadn’t written these words, however trite and terrible they may be on the page, I would have lost any semblance of agency that remains in my domestic life.

With every word that takes shape into a thought or idea or message, my body loosens its constrictions. It relaxes. There is an ease with words, a way out or a way through or a way beyond. For me, it’s the only way. It’s all I have.