Spike Mom
I just witnessed my mother scream at,
strike and choke a Doberman puppy, for hours*. The dog is her pet of a few
months. I am not overwhelmingly moved by animal cruelty, perhaps not any more
than your average person. I am a pragmatist and have always accepted that some
animals live and die by the wills of humans and those higher on the food chain.
But I strongly believe in being humane, and causing as little suffering to
animals (people included) as we can during the time we are alive. We should try
to create a planet where as many beings as possible can flourish for as long as
possible. Tread lightly. Propagate happiness.
My mother does not know how to do these
things. As I watched her beat that dog, as she has beaten the dog that came
before, and the dog that came before that (until before I was born) and the
cats too, and just about every other animal in her care – I felt deeply
distressed, and more weary by the second. I watched the dog being reprimanded
with greater and greater vitriol, and as the pitch rose and my mother pushed
the dog away harder, the dog became even more invested in being close to my
mother. I watched, in one heart breaking moment as my mother struck the dog,
and it affectionately, desperately, pleadingly licked her other arm. I was
immediately in mind of a psychology article that I read recently. It discusses the research of Harry Harlow who
interrogated the nature of love through mother-infant attachment experiments
using rhesus monkeys. He constructed surrogate mothers for the monkeys, ranging
from warm, soft-covered and reassuring; to violent and austere. I recalled the
“brass spike mom” from the experiment:
“The fourth monster mother had brass spikes
(blunt-tipped) tucked into her chest; these would suddenly, unexpectedly push
against the clinging child. What Harlow found was both heartbreaking and
heartbreakingly understandable — rather than fleeing from the monstrous mothers,
the babies tried harder to earn their affection. After every violent repulsion,
they returned to the monsters, only to cling more tightly and coo more
beseechingly, “expressing faith and love as if all were forgiven,” as Harlow
put it.”
In this I saw my own mother. And her dog.
And how she treated me. I was deeply moved. And deeply shocked, by something I
had known all along. Every pet she has ever had has possessed a degree of
separation anxiety and Stockholm syndrome. This is how my mother treats all her
pets. This is how my grandmother treated my mother, and still treats my mother,
and yet my mother keeps coming back for more. It is how my mother treated me. I
don’t know how I ever escaped the psychological loop of abuse. How I didn’t end
up clinging to her in the vain hope that love could fix it all.
I last remember being proud of my mother
when I was five, because I was the only child in kindergarten who could write
their own name, and I was proud that she had taught me well. Once I was old enough
to be exposed to other people, once I realised something was different and not
right – by the age of seven – all I could feel was uneasy distaste. I often say
the only thing my mother blessed me with, apart from healthy genes, was a sense
of curiosity. A sense of curiosity that led me out into the wider world and
away from hers.
My mother likes to tell me that I don’t
share the same love of animals that she does, that she has compassion and
caring and a depth of feeling that I will never have. She believes that ‘animal
people’ are genuine and trustworthy, and that others are cold and callous. She
criticises me for not keeping pets, she tells me I wouldn’t be capable of it
anyway. She says that I will never be like her. She says I would make a terrible
mother. But she is the reason that I will never have children or pets.
I will never be like her.
*For those wondering why I didn’t stop the
attacks on the dog, I did try, but to do so overtly would have (unsurprisingly)
led to me receiving the same treatment as the dog, possibly in conjunction with
other repercussions unfathomable to a canine. My mother called me later that
night, after she had left, and told me that she was sinking into a deep
depression about the dog['s failings], but rather than having that happen, she thought she
would call me (and lay it on me instead). Today has not been a good day, folks.
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