There is no secret ingredient for being a good mother. This is what the “Future Home of Living God” story indicates. The story of Cedar Hawk Songmaker, on her birth name Mary Potts reveals that a woman should develop her own style of being a mother. In the beginning of the story she tells to her unborn baby “I promise you this: I’ll be a good mother even though I’ve fucked up everything so far.” (Erdrich 3), based on the second edition of a magazine that she read while she was at the Mayo Clinic – the Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. She felt prepared to be a mother, and good one, after reading that guide, in which there were suggested motherhood advices, told by unknown people.
Mary Pots’ reaction to that article is that she considers herself prepared for being a mother, a good one, because she had received clear indications on how to do it. She learns later, while she still bears her baby, that mothering is not just a “copy - paste” from an article. She understands that being a mother means always being there for her child, even when he or she is spoiled, does not want her on his/her side, when the child is expressing anger, fury, discontent, all the time. She learns this while she visited her natural mother, who had abandoned her as a child, because, as her mother herself explains, she was just “stupid” (Erdrich 11). Mary Pots, or Cedar Hawk had visited her mother for asking her if there were any genetic illness in their family, as she was much concerned that her baby might inherit any disease.
Actually, this is the first evolution for Mary Pots in her quest of being a good mother: facing up her fears of knowing her natural mother, although she avoided this for a very long time. She understood that her anger upon her mother for rejecting and abandoning her as a child should be forgiven now that she will have a baby of her own and when she must know her genes, preventing that her baby would be ill.
The woman also becomes aware of the fact that she must not base the motherhood on advices placed in some theoretic guides, when she sees the discontent and the sadness of her emotionally unbalanced natural teenage sister. On her name, also Mary, the teenager tells Cedar Hawk that her mother had stopped watching over her, teaching her, controlling her and practically had stopped being a good mother, after she had read an article within a parenting magazine that it was best to pick the battles with the teenagers and allow their intimacy (Erdrich 15). The girl feels alone, when she needed her mother’s caress, she feels unattended and uncontrolled, at an age when she most needed her mother to help her with advices. She acts tough, but in fact, she is very vulnerable. She puts on her masks of make-up, the Lolita looks, but she hides a person who would need her mother’s touch, who guide her in her life. She is without control and she is just acting up for attracting her mother’s attention. But her mother just lets her be the way she wants, ignoring the dangers that she might become an alcohol addict or a drug abusive, because a magazine told her to allow her intimacy.
Mary Pops understood that her initial consideration, that she was prepared to be a good mother because she had read in an article how to do it was wrong and that life teaches you how to be a mother, even if sometimes the child does not consider you a good mother. Nonetheless, May Potts’ direct experience with a mother who is taking advices from magazines on how to be a good mother (Mary Potts Almost Senior) showed her that this is not the best way of raising a child.
The story indicates that Mary Pots has learned something about how not to be a mother precisely from her natural mother. She will probably have to learn many other things about how to be a good mother, but she will not be learning anything from reading, but from practical, everyday life experience of carrying and loving her baby.
In relation to this, Amy Tuteur’s article, “Being a Good Mother Is Not about Specific Mothering Choices” indicates that mothers should love and care for their children based on their own feelings and not on the standards imposed by the society.
The choices that a mother makes for her children, on how to interact with other children, on how to dress, what to eat, etc., should be solely be based on the relationship between the mother and the child, a relationship based on maternal love and care. As Mary Potts seems to have understood this aspect, she is becoming the mother that Tuteur admires and indicates as a good mother.
Works Cited
Erdrich, Louise, in Kooser, Ted, American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice. Oakland, New Village Press. 2011. Print.
Tuteur, Amy, Being a Good Mother Is Not about Specific Mothering Choices. Accessed on April 15, 2012, retrieved from http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/08/good-mother-specific-mothering-choices.html. N.d. Web.
