“Mother” is fantastic in a simple way: two women had biological children. In today’s society, it’s seemingly impossible. Yet the fantastic doesn’t just reside in the seemingly impossible.
When I was first told what motherhood entailed – caring and loving for a child for your lifetime and everything in between – I resolved to never be one. I told myself, I will not continue the generational trauma of abuse that my maternal grandmother started. I am third in the line of this trauma and abuse – and it’ll end with me. This is why I couldn’t relate to “Mother”, a story where a woman comes to learn to love motherhood – but I could appreciate the language and theme of the story, which is a mother learning to care for her children and know what’s best for them. I never had that in a mother, so it seems foreign to me. When I first read this story, I couldn’t see what the fantastic was beyond the same-sex couple having a child. To me – there was no fantastic beyond that. When I read it a second time though, the personally fantastic – in other words, what we personally find fantastic compared to others – was the idea a mother could love.
Trigger warning: The next part of this post describes emotional abuse and toxic family. Please skip to bolded “Fin” if you are triggered by these topics.
Not to go too much into my personal life (yes JGB I have to, to make my point. Yes I know but hear me out) but my mother did actually seem to care once. My earliest memories are of her playing with us sisters, being happy then laughing. Then something happened. I went from being played with to my entire room being emptied out over an autistic meltdown. Then it was constant arguing, screams that sent me into tears, and purposefully (by her) on-set tantrums and spying. Not long after, the parentification of watching my ten-year-old sister and six-month-old brother. Then the outright emotional abuse.
I only just ended it. I will not be continuing it.
Fin triggering content.
All this to say that the fantastic in this story is a mother who cares to me – in this world, there are plenty of them, but not enough. Personal fantastic is amazing – in a way, it’s how we bond with the story, turn it into our escapism. I did it with several books – Warriors, Harry Potter, The King’s Men (Book 3 of the “All For the Game Trilogy) and “Mother” proves to be joining that list. It’s intoxicating to me – how much this woman despises, then comes to love her children. It’s the story I wish I had instead of my horrid one. It’s personally very fantastic to me – I can’t imagine this, my brain won’t allow me.
The personal fantastic presents itself in everyday life – we daydream, read, create. “Mother” strikes my personal fantastic in such a way I went back and read it five times in two hours of my own accord (seven total, twice for this assignment) because it’s escapism. It’s the mother I wanted but never got. And isn’t that fantastic, that something as simple as a story of a woman taking in her biological child and loving her, can be escapism for a generation that may not have its mothers?