My Mother s Footsteps Created by Kaylin Kaupish Showcased at the 2016 NYC Feminist Zinefest

Transcription

1 My Mother s Footsteps Created by Kaylin Kaupish 2016 Showcased at the 2016 NYC Feminist Zinefest

2 My Mother s Footsteps Whether we follow our mother s footsteps or try our hardest to avoid them, they are always in our sight. This zine concentrates on the mother-daughter relationship and the differences between how a mother lives, how a mother wants her daughter to live, and how a daughter actually lives. Zine created by Kaylin Kaupish. All poetry and prose by Kaylin Kaupish. Texts in quotes are contributions from women who were asked how they are or are not following their mother s footsteps. Further writing by Kaylin Kaupish at kaylinkaupish.wordpress.com I graduated from the same university in Virginia with a Bachelor s degree in English. I met a boy at that college and we fell in love. I moved to Brooklyn, and when the boy asked if he could go with me, I said yes. I am 24 and I have never wanted kids. I have three younger siblings. I helped my mother when she was a nanny. I volunteered at a day care and I had baby dolls as a child. I even pretended to breastfeed my doll once. But I never wanted kids. When they asked the kids in my class what they wanted to be when they grew up, I always changed my answer. Archeologist. Writer. Actress. Dancer. Movie Director. I never realized when the other girls said their answers, they meant Mother. So in the two minutes I sit in my living room, I think about how I never want kids. I think about the boy my mother moved to Brooklyn with. I think about how he became my father. I think about the boy I am in Brooklyn with. I think about my mother being brave. I think about the white houses on the cliffs. I think about Woody Allen. The timer on my phone goes off and I reach for the pregnancy stick that is sitting on my coffee table. I think about how I am like my mother. I think about how I need to be brave enough to not be her.

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7 My mom was a single mother with two children when she graduated from med school in the top of her class and completed her residency. She is now one of the top Psychiatrists at MCV Hospital. I hated her for never being around. I hated that she worked all the time. She would put us to sleep, study for hours, sleep for a couple hours, get up at 3 am to do the laundry and then study some more. I d have to sleep over at friend s houses all the time. My dad and grandma would take turns watching us. My aunt moved from Florida to Virginia to help take care of us. All this was no good, because all I wanted was my momma. I resented the hell out of her. I swore that I would never become a doctor. I would never put myself through the hell my mom went through. When I enrolled at UNCW for marine biology, I began taking classes and found out that a lot of my fellow classmates were premed students. I tried so hard to not follow in her footsteps, but here I was taking classes similar to what she took in college. I took a psychology class to fulfill a basic study course and ended up falling in love with it, just like my mom. I loved it so much that I continued taking psychology classes and even had enough credits to minor in it. I will always have so much respect and admiration for my mom, because she did all of that for us. As hard as I tried not to follow in her footsteps, I took the most demanding major offered at UNCW alongside pre-med students and discovered my own passion for the field that my mom has excelled in.

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10 My mom is a musical theater director and when I was a kid, she d bring me along to rehearsals, later making me be in the shows. Now that I m in a band, she ll take credit for how musical I am, and in some ways I have to give her some credit. But what I want to tell her is that I took what she gave me and ran in the absolute opposite direction: from the fake and the fiction to the truest, hardest, most vulnerable place I could go, and that took courage I didn t get from her.

11 My mother is a 54-year-old white divorcee who has worked in retail her whole adult life, never lived away from her semi-rural hometown, and is a devout Christian; while I m an atheist who left home at 17 to attend college five hours away and am currently living with my black boyfriend of 5 years. Our lives couldn t be more different, but I don t look down on her for her choices and she doesn t look down on me for mine.

12 Not Her I sit in my living room and wait for two minutes. My legs are curled up on the leather couch and it chills my skin. I stare at the seemingly innocuous item on my coffee table. I take another sip of the water I chugged a few minutes ago. I think about my mother. She wanted to become a movie director. She wanted to be the next Woody Allen. She wanted to go to Greece. She wanted to see the bleach-white houses along the cliffs. She graduated from a university in Virginia with a Bachelor s in Theater. She met a boy at that college and they fell in love. She moved to Brooklyn, and when the boy asked if he could come with her, she said yes. She was there only a year before she sat in the same position I am in. Perhaps she also curled her legs up on the couch. Maybe it felt cold against her skin as well. I don t know. She was 24 when she got pregnant. I wonder if she had second thoughts. If she thought about the white houses and how she wanted to live there. If she thought about the coolness of the camera s viewfinder against her eye. If she thought about going to the clinic. If a protestor had shoved a sign in her face and she turned around. Was she scarred enough to keep me or brave enough to keep me? I don t know. I graduated from the same university in Virginia with a Bachelor s degree in English. I met a boy at that college and we fell in love. I moved to Brooklyn, and when the boy asked if he could go with me, I said yes. I am 24 and I have never wanted kids. I have three younger siblings. I helped my mother when she was a nanny. I volunteered at a day care and I had baby dolls as a child. I even pretended to breastfeed my doll once. But I never wanted kids. When they asked the students in my class what they wanted to be when they grew up, I always changed my answer. Archeologist. Writer. Actress. Dancer. Movie Director. I never realized when the other girls said their answers, they meant Mother. So in the two minutes I sit in my living room, I think about how I never want kids. I think about the boy my mother moved to Brooklyn with. I think about how he became my father. I think about the boy I am in Brooklyn with. I think about my mother being brave. I think about the white houses on the cliffs. I think about Woody Allen. The timer on my phone goes off and I reach for the pregnancy stick that is sitting on my coffee table. As I reach, I think about how I am like my mother. I think about how I need to be brave enough to not be her.

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