Modern Mythology

A poem I wrote back in 1998 as I struggled to be what I thought was expected of me: as a wife and mother. Sometimes we set the bar so high for ourselves, we run the risk of wearing ourselves out. I now understand that the roles that help define me (yet do not limit me) are many: wife, mother, daughter, aunt, sister, friend, and writer..to name a few. I also realized, the perfection I was buying into was only an illusion.

Modern Mythology

Like vaudevillians balancing

spinning plates on poles,

we juggle checkbooks and date books,

playgroups and meetings,

mealtimes and free time,

at a frenzied pace.

We strive to be the best

in all our interactions

with those we most cherish:

husbands, lovers, children,

parents and friends,

while often in the process

we shortchange ourselves.

We long to be the perfect woman.

Reading mounds of self-help books,

watching Oprah and chanting her mantra

we search desperately for the path that leads

us away from our frantic, harried lives

and towards the elusive myth of perfection.

Are we genetically ingrained

to give our all to others?

How long and how much will we give?

Will we give until we ache

into the very core

of our bodies, minds and souls?

Do we bleed each month because of Eve’s sin,

or because we give so much of ourselves?

Is it a wound of selflessness?

Is it an affliction that we bear

because of our obsession?

Can we accept the truth-

the reality that there is no perfect woman?

Be she wife, lover, mother, daughter or friend,

she does not exist in perfection,

except in those dated fables of long ago.

June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson

were paragons of excellence.

They set standards we can never attain

for they are the goddesses of twentieth century mythology.

Just remember,

they are not real,

only dubious myths

concocted in Hollywood

by a roomful of cigar-smoking men.

Rose S. Williams

©Southernstoryteller

1998

This poem was published in Della Donna, a webzine for women, April 2008.