Marissa
Marissa Wiebe
11/12/2021
A Story of Unknowing
my Mother to Know my Lover
As is today and was yesterday
Images taken over three days on a Holga 300 film camera.
Images developed over 3 hours.
Step 1: Unravelling film in a bathtub, pitch dark.
Audio Clip: Emailed
Step 2: Mixing Chemicals and shaking and waiting and stirring; again; and one more time.
Step 3: Hang to dry then digitize
[Image 1. Mother laughing in a field of corn]
Tethered
I am in the faces of my mother.
The eyes that notice and hands that mend are things I try to mimic.
Generous mother,
Lending her body and heart to me, to us.
My Mother taught me how to plant and seed and harvest.
I am in this soil that nourishes; let us break bread.
This was my playground; golden fields of sunflower and hay and corn and wheat stretching as far as the eye can see.
Nestled trees hushed the land as they slumbered under heavy snows of winter, muted and peaceful.
After many years away, I have come back to this place where I grew up.
Alongside my tender-hearted lover, I knock and wait on the doorstep of my mother’s house.
[Fig. 2. Mother standing on a prairie road, puddles from tractor wheel divets in the foreground]
Mother to Daughter
In living memory and since before:
Soothing; Flittering; Hushing; Mending
Rocking chair rocks and lulls and hushes
Flittering Rush; hand-back-handed corrections
Mothers to Daughters and back again
Out loud is the feeling inside; awkward, uncomfortable and slightly painful
While hands work to tidy and hush and mend the body becomes rigid and bent;
Correction; stiff and fragmented
fidgeting with a pocket full of outcast fragments
Yesterday’s conflict and hopes punched into daily bread;
Wounds still tender that need mending and soothing and lulling
Eat it and be nourished.
[Fig. 3. Self-Portrait reflection in a window and an empty chair.]
On Your Doorstep
We’ve been waiting on this doorstep; waiting and wishing and hushing.
Is this where we are now?
Familial unknowing and un-becoming?
Meanwhile, I have been witness to all my forms, my folds, my fragments.
In this place, beyond the fold.
On my own but not alone.
In this position beyond the threshold of safety and home. Wrapping, unwrapping folds of myself in sun and shadow, working and waiting…..
So here I am here, again, waiting to be let in.
Wounds still tender that need mending and soothing and lulling,
[knock-knock-knock-quiet—---]
[Fig. 4. Lover reading by the window on a
sun-soaked couch]
Sun-Kissed Lover
I am in the heart of my lover.
Known and nurtured, hand-in-hand we walked to the doorstep of my mothers house. We wait, together, sun-bathing and singing and laughing.
[Fig. 5. A triple-exposed self-portrait; sitting in a rocking chair next to a closed fireplace)
Clarity (whatever that means)
A decision made, not in haste but in devotion, stops my waiting. The necessity to move forward without - Or is it opportunity? Either way, “without” leaves some metallic taste in my mouth. And my fragmented self separates yet again.
Showing up will look different next time.
Here we are, un-knowing each other to keep something else.
Wounds still tender need mending and soothing and lulling,
Perhaps by the mother I am now - out of necessity or opportunity - yes. With my soft and comforting wife, I turn and leave the unanswered door.
