Gracie Johnston
There’s a Claw on my Shoulder
I feel a tenderness. It bubbles up inside my chest. My organs and my muscles and my bones rearrange to make space for it. The movement grinds and aches but requires no explanation as to why it’s there. That ache feels entirely deserving and at home. It moves in my body and in my stomach. Making canyons between my ribs and below my heart.
Nothing occupies this space, but it stays open. A blinking motel light, its neon sign humming to make vacancy known. I can imagine what it would feel like to fill this space. To allow something tangible and real to take shape. I can imagine because the space is alive, breathing and feeling and reaching out, even with nothing to grasp on to.
I don’t have a baby. I don’t know if I ever will. The list of fears and anxieties hangs on to that hypothetical child like a cape, catching their feet and making them stumble. I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it, I would mess it up.
In the song “Reaper” by Clairo, motherhood is spoken of as a looming presence. A reaper creeping up through the floorboards and peeking around the door. Either beckoning one to follow or giving them the sign that their time is soon. She doesn’t sing about a reaper of death, but a reaper of the life . A natural transition that takes one’s individualism and independence. A loss of putting oneself first, in exchange for a sweet small life that needs the moon and the sun and the stars.
“There’s a claw on my shoulder/ and she’s saying the obvious/ “You know eventually you’re gonna have to be a provider, too”.”
The presence is loud and cloying and overwhelming.
I feel this presence most when I’m called upon to give care. To give compassion and comfort. To brush hair back and rub my thumb along the back of a hand. This presence comes to me in dreams and in the mirror. When I see my own mother in the extension of my neck and the lilt of my voice when I’m consoling.
When I open out my hands and loop them back to pull someone in or when I gather all I have into the slope of my upper arms because something needs up. I get swept by the intensity of this presence, but I don’t oppose it.
When someone asks if I like kids, or if I want kids, the words tend to tumble out quickly. No, I’m not really that type of person. I’ve never really been interested, baby of the family and all that. It doesn’t feel pressing now, I’m young, but isn’t it always pressing?
Does every daughter of a mother have that tenderness intrinsically laced into their blood and their bones? Woven into their thoughts and sowed into the actions that grow from them? Do all of the hugs and the kisses and the good jobs and the bottles and the pick ups and the phone calls and the hand squeezes and the same smiles come naturally, from that sweet, vacant spot?
I can’t say what will happen in my future, but I can say with certainty that every edge I have has been softened by tenderness. Tenderness carved out by the hand of my mother and engraved into the place where my hand would carve. Tenderness in looking ahead at what is to come, made stronger now by extending care to the gentle things in front of me. Whether or not that vacancy becomes filled, softness will remain and that reaper will always have a place in the room.
Back to “Motherhood and the Body”
Gracie Johnston is a creative writer based in Tucson, Arizona. She focuses on creative prose and personal essays, with an emphasis on motherhood, femininity, and spirituality as it pertains to the world around her. You can find more of her work on Substack, @graciejohnston.