Pop 89: Mother bears, sister badgers, brother dogs

By Madonna Hamel

I started writing this just before Mother's Day, as both an acknowledgement of all the ways I have been nurtured and nourished over the years by the women in my life.

Let's face it, there is no official Mother's Day. Every day someone's yelling: Mom! Where's my…? The miracle is how mom knows exactly where the damn thing is.

I'd also like to recall how I've tried to nurture others in my life, and maybe even help them find something to get them through the occasional dark day.

One of my greatest regrets is that I never had children. But some of my greatest sources of pride have been the times I've been able to be a Mother Bear to others, the most memorable incident involving planting myself between a trio of blustering pre-pubescent bullies doing their best to frighten kids half their age.

I was with my little brother and sister at the time, and we were exploring the bottom of Dead Man's Cliff, a part of our neighbourhood in Prince George we rarely ventured into. It was my first memory of adrenaline-fuelled outrage. When I imagine the moment, I see the hairs on the grubby little bully bastards' heads flying backwards at the sheer force of my voice, my hollering stopping them in their tracks.

Barely twelve at the time, I was not yet F-bombing, but I made it very clear who they were dealing with, and that their ludicrous posturing and gesticulating - one opening and closing a pen knife, another pounding his right fist into his left palm - made them look stupid, not tough at all. "Who do you think you are? They're just kids," I berated and bellowed. "You are in so much trouble!"

The bullies quickly slunk away, and we made it home, wobbly-kneed but safe. But I can still recall that wave of helplessness that comes from watching people I love be threatened by forces beyond my control.

It occurs to me that I would have been preparing for my Confirmation at the time. The Catholic sacrament of Confirmation is meant to celebrate an outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost, that day when the dove descended on their heads and gave them the gift of tongues, the spirit of wisdom, understanding, and, above all, courage and holy fear. Fear of the Lord was what I intended to place in the hearts of those bullies.

In those days of preparation for Confirmation, I imagined myself Joan of Arc, wielding my sword, marching in full chainmail through the park behind our house, forging forward fierce and full of the Spirit, hearing the voice of Sister Mercy reminding me of the words of St. Teresa of Avila: "God plus one is an army."

I've written about my mother-sisters, and how they "bear up" under insane and troubling circumstances. But we sisters can "badger," as well. Rarely do badgers harass or threaten humans. They don't need to; they merely need to raise their claws to remind us who's boss. They know what they are capable of.

I want to write about aunties, too.

When my friend Jenelle visited me in the hospital, standing sturdy and long-limbed and capable in her plaid car coat and sporty treads, she reminded me of two of my own aunts - Aunty Peg and Aunty Dell (Adelle). It was something about Jenelle's stance - sturdy, un-topple-able, not exactly a caryatid holding up the weight of the room, but solid. The weight of her own body and her world evenly distributed like a female point guard playing for the WNBA.

Jenelle is a formidable aunt. The kind of aunt I'd like to think myself to be. The kind she's had to be. She's done more than her fair share of raising her own siblings from an early age.

While my Aunty Peg encouraged me into English Lit studies, Aunty Dell helped keep my pilot light burning - that dove-lit flame - burning inside me by singing her favourite hymns, encouraging me to let my little light shine.

As an aunty myself, I have tried to encourage creativity, risk-taking and even eccentricity. I've tried to remain playful, to move to the music, to ride the rhythm of the day. But above all, I've tried to be someone my nephews and niece can turn to when the conventional cringe-worthy expectations of the material world impinge on their spirits.

Which brings us to brothers. Two days ago I found myself grabbing my brother Doug by his stubbly cheeks and telling him, in no uncertain terms, that he is my favourite person in the whole wide world. At that moment I felt his sense of loyalty toward me. He understood that even in the midst of my confusion and perplexity around my galloping cancerous GBM, he was staying in the game. He was - is - keeping the language of myth and story and poetry alive.

He is loyal like a dog not just because he is loyal to me as his big sister, to whom he once referred as his big brother (a high compliment in my mind) because I introduced him to Joseph Campbell and Robert Bly, but because he is loyal to the craft of finding, catching, keeping and scribbling the right word at the right time.

I am dogged by his words, the most recent coming from a poem he sent me last summer, about a broken heart. I am quoting it here, with his permission.

"Yesterday, when the ocean asked my name, I turned my head away, ashamed, I replied… 'I don't know it yet, but I know of a woman, who can name things when she sees them.'

I turned my face back to the ocean, and whispered into the wind and waves. 'I am trying to stand still, so she can see me.'"

It is the last line especially that dogs me. It pierces my heart, and will stick with me forever.

I think of my brother's struggle with vision after his stroke having taken out most of his occipital lobe, so that it's as if he's "looking at the world through a diving mask filled with water."

We all need to be seen. To be borne up. And yes, even when we resist the prodding - to be badgered in the best possible way.