On the depiction of women, pt. 2

Dear Mom,

I don’t know how to include you in this text and I don’t know how not to. I woke this morning at 4:26, the lifelong struggle of insomnia unceasing. I distinctly remember living in New Jersey, awake in my bed, waiting for it to be an acceptable time to tip-toe into your room. There had been a break of winds here in Montana but two days ago they picked up again with the arrival of the full moon — Gichi-Manidoo-Giizis, Chris teaches me — which feels appropriate: Great Spirit Moon.

It has been now forty days since you told us of your cancer. In that time you’ve had tumors removed from your body, you’ve gone to countless doctors offices and appointments, you’ve been in pain and in relief, you’ve felt positive and capable and depressed and deflated.

I had two clear and sharp realizations only a few hours after you told me, one being that you are the one who sees me. You are the one I rarely have to explain things to. You are the one who, without fail, will be my ally, my champion, my cheerleader. What will life be like without you validating my human experience every step of the way?

“I liked it, but the whole time I was reading, I was wondering, like, where’s your mom?” responds a classmate to my work in the only writing class I ever ventured to. It was March 2020. We were supposed to be in a room together in Denver, but here we all were, beaming in through something called Zoom.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Yes, Caroline, I was curious about this as well,” the teacher chimes in. “For a piece on ancestral matriarchs, your mom is noticeably absent.”

“It’s not about her,” I nearly snap. There is a suspended silence. I never went back to the class.

I wanted to write about my paternal matriarchs because I felt I knew them the least, even though I looked like them the most. I felt distant from you, Mom, in many ways. Our bodies were so different, our outlook on life, our belief or disbelief in Jesus, what we wanted for each other … everything seemed like oil and water. I thought perhaps I could find myself in a series of women I didn’t know. I thought I could dig and dig and dig and dig and there would be a recipe, dirty and ancient and buried but true, for who I am, for all that I felt.

Perhaps I am not done digging. Or perhaps I am digging in the wrong place. Or perhaps, our differences, our complexity, our fights, our laughter, our appreciation of one another is the recipe. Perhaps you are in these pages, even though I work diligently at keeping you out. Perhaps your influence permeates every bit of this text. Perhaps is a silly word to use.

Last year you began to speak quietly on the phone to me of traveling alone, of experiencing the world outside of any defined role, of exploring your desires. I held a steady line of “Do it. You should do that. Definitely do that,” for you and you murmured yeah, yeah... One and a half more years of teaching public school and then you’d be free with a pension, a knowledge that you provided more than enough for the two of you, and an open schedule. You’ll just be turning 72, healthy, vibrant, curious. Maybe we would go to Ireland together?

My writing takes on a new urgency, and I will finish this work so you can see yourself on every page —

Portugal, 28 June 2025, EJP’s 70th birthday.

I have always been attracted to witches, starting with my first exposure in a history book — Salem, 1692. As a pre-teen I consume as much as I can about these figures of blatant femininity, these victims of an authoritarian, Christian, male-led society. I saw myself in every one accused. But decades pass before I actively pick up the interest again. This time, it’s rooted in earth practices. This time it’s a ritual of water, a connection of my body to the moon, an inquiry into the soil and a harnessing of the planet’s rhythms.

“Have you heard of this? Seems like you’d be into it,” my moms subject lines an email two months ago, sharing a link to the pagan ritual of 13 magical nights beginning on the winter solstice. I send her back a photo of my intentions, all folded and ready to go, each night one dutifully and blindly burned in the fire until I am left with a single intention on January 2. What has the astral plane chosen for me?

In the years I’ve spent with primary documents I encounter name after name of female ancestor in census lists or parish logs, each time the “role” category holds only one word: domestica.

What I love about witchcraft done by European women is its foundation in home and community care. It’s about health, preservation, protection. It is about fighting evil, control, and obedience with what is already within. It is resistance, it is survival.

Our practices as Iberian women have been the same since time immemorial and it’s these practices that root me. I write of my ancestors not because they were remarkable but because their lives mirror mine through millennia. I make bread, I grow kale. My purpose in life is not unlike my mother’s or those before us: To nourish those around me. This is my son. My partner. My neighbors. My community. Those whose hearts have intertwined with mine beyond borders, beyond rules, beyond comprehension. When I’m in that truth the artistry comes fluidly — like any woman in her body.