#The Score of my Life: prompt
Courage in Confrontation
A prescient confrontation with a sow and her cubs prepared me for one of the greatest challenges of my own motherhood. In the utter west I cohabit with cougars, bears and wolves. Nevertheless despite my own preparedness I startled a Black Bear (picture shows more aggressive Grizzlies). Because of strong winds and a 90 degree turn in the road my bells and yodeling had failed to warn her of my advance. She charged at me despite my sounding an air horn 3 times. God forbid I have yet to use a pepper spray or knife. Raising my hands above my head made me as imposing as possible. It wasn’t until I shouted “I mean you no harm!” that she stopped a few meters away. We stood face to face as mothers, both painfully cognizant of the recent loss of one of her 3 cubs. Our meetings later in the summer were cordial. I received her hypervigilance as an invaluable gift.
My 15 year old daughter was dancing 6 days a week in a pre-professional program which included school classes from 7:30–11:30 each morning. She was upheld in this team work. Unbeknownst to us she had fallen into friendships with troubled youth outside the troupe. We received a call from neighbours one morning, (we were still out of town), that there had been a home invasion with over a hundred strangers, police intervention and a young man had been assaulted on the head with a beer bottle.
Never leave your teens alone given the instantaneous widespread broadcast of an unsupervised home.
To our knowledge no one was gravely hurt. What might have been, is a terrifying prospect. And this is when my soul took on the hypervigilance of the mother I had met months before.
Without any support from her father or my friends I enclosed her in the safety of being grounded. I visited her friends who had conspired to party in my home which was remarkable unscathed, though jewelry and a guitar were stolen, carpets muddied and burned.
A year later I found a missing piece of my stove in the garden. We visited the traumatized neighbours with apology flowers. I explained to my daughter’s friends’ parents that these relationships were over. I policed this vehemently rendering me exceedingly unpopular and the recipient of hate mail.
Just over a year later my daughter had become a peer mentor in her high school, speaking to younger students about the dangers of partying and using substances. She formally gave me credit for saving her life. Some of her other friends were tragically lost into the street.
She is now a mother of 2 boys for which I thank the mother bear who taught me to respect our instinctual anger. Health happiness and harmony for us and ours.
This piece was inspired by Jean Carfantan’s “#The Score of My Soul.”
