by Tod Davies
When I was five years old, my mother, who I loved with a red hot thwarted passion, sat me down and made me promise Something Big.
"Promise me, little Tod, that you will never, ever write about me."
I solemnly promised. Why did she ask this? It never occurred to me until much, much later that there was anything strange in it. Was I already showing signs I might disobey? I must have. As far as I remember, I had always meant to be a writer. I had been born a writer. If she didn't want me to write about her, to coax or enforce that promise made perfect sense.
So I promised.
Years later, writing every morning in my little room before I went onto my day of being a maid and a college English teacher, I would feel, as I sat at my typewriter, like I was crawling over glass. Like I was the Little Mermaid and walking on knives. This is not metaphoric; this was actual. Knives stabbed at my chest and I couldn't breathe. This happened every morning, every morning, over and over for years.
I am by nature a commonsensical person
I am bung full of common sense. Left to myself, I'm a healthy animal who just wants what every other healthy animal wants: to love and be loved, to be fed, to express myself.
When I found that last so hard, I thought ruefully, "Well. This must not be for me then. What an odd thing. That I would spend so much time torturing myself…these knives in my chest are really very, very painful. And certainly the world doesn't need another writer. So. The best thing to do is to give it up."
Obviously.
Not so obviously.
Not so simple. Because every time I gave up writing — and I mean, writing or thinking about structures of what I would write, and I mean for three hours alone every day — I got sick. Those sicknesses were not, in some ways, as bad as the knives stabbing me in the chest, but they were a whole lot harder to hide from the rest of the world, and they needed to be treated. And what was their result? Why that I had hours a day alone to write and to think. Which was what I wanted in the first place. But then when I was alone, the knives would start again.
Well, that was when I remembered: my mother had made me promise not to write about her and I had kept that promise. Because when you are five years old, your mother is the whole world. If you promise not to write about her, you are promising not to write about the whole world.
This does not leave a whole lot left to write about.
My mother, in effect, cursed me. And I lived under that curse for years — because what daughter wouldn't want to repay her mother any way she can? If I wasn't happy about it, I was at least sulkily compliant.
But the Night of the Long Knives has gone on long enough, I judge. I've tried every other method I can think of to kick over the pail. I've tried therapy. I've tried religion. I've tried patience. I've tried good works. I've tried Virtue.
None of these released me from that dire little promise I made when I was five.
I've come to the conclusion that all there is for it is to revoke the promise, as a coerced contract made between parties of unequal bargaining power. And the only way I can think of to get a brand new start is to Write About My Mother. From every angle I can. In all her manifold glories and imperfections, for all the manifestations of which I certainly had a ringside seat.
I hereby declare that contract null and void.