Mothering Without Being a Mother

Love and Absence

Here in the U.S. it is almost Mother’s Day—a holiday that inspires a complicated mixture of love and disquiet in me. The love is easy: I have an amazing mother and a delightful stepmother. Then there is the joy of celebrating the day with my ten-year-old daughter, who has hinted that I have a sweet treat in my future!

But the disquiet—well, I cannot help but be conscious of certain absences on Mother’s Day, especially the absence of those mother figures I have lost, such as my dear grandmothers. There is another absence I often consider: the lack of recognition for the many wonderful women out there who are not defined as mothers, and yet who contribute so much to our happiness and growth as a society. I believe it is important to celebrate these women, too.

It was this idea of mothering without being a mother that led me, in part, to write Seasons of Waiting several years ago. In this Pride and Prejudice variation, Elizabeth and Darcy are both a good deal older (45 and 53) when they find their second chance at love—and neither has any children of their own. Yet they both play a significant role in the lives of their nieces, nephews, and the other children in their communities. Elizabeth is a particularly important mentor to her niece and namesake, Lizzy Bingley.

I have been thinking a bit about Seasons of Waiting of late, as I’m in the midst of turning the e-book into a paperback. Below is an excerpt from the chapter, “A Fork in the Path.” 

This excerpt is from Elizabeth Bennet’s point of view. I hope you enjoy!

Excerpt from Seasons of Waiting, “A Fork in the Path”

May 9, 1837

She stood at the fork, considering each footpath as if she had never seen either in her life. In some sense, she had not—not exactly. With each windstorm, each drop of rain, each and every subtle change in that wooded glen between Meryton and Netherfield, the paths altered themselves in ways she would never fully understand. Never mind that she had stood at this spot nearly every day of her adult life, contemplating: left or right? She sometimes considered backward an option, and there were a few days each year when sitting on the muddy ground and going nowhere seemed like the best decision of all. Usually, though, it was a simple, binary choice: left or right?

Simple, yes—and yet there was a magic to the choosing. Once, having taken the left path every day for a week, she returned to the right path and found its dirt covered with brightly colored mushrooms she had never seen before. And by the time she took the left again, a tree had fallen across the way, turning her usual, sedate walk home into an adventure that led to a tear in her dress, an angry red scratch across her leg, and a ruined pair of shoes.

No one understood this ritual of hers, not even Lizzy, who tried with all her might to understand everything Elizabeth had to tell her. But then Lizzy was perhaps too young to imagine a life in which choosing one path over another had any great significance. 

Was there any more earnest, curious person in the world than the child of her sweetest sister and most cheerful brother-in-law? At this thought, Elizabeth laughed aloud, startling a flock of birds from the large yew tree that separated the two paths. She had lived with Jane and Charles for too long to think of them only as sweet and cheerful. She had seen her sister scream at a particularly foolish doctor (and there had been many to come through Netherfield since Thomas’s birth); and Charles was anything but cheerful when it came to money, which these days seemed always to be in short supply. Or rather, he had in the past been so cheerful about spending money that the stress of living beyond his income was now beginning to show.

Elizabeth had been shocked to see him last night, on the family’s return from London: his hair, which had gradually been changing color, was now completely slate-gray; and his eyes, though they had been marked with laugh lines for many years, now appeared sunken. She knew it was unfair to judge his mental state on his appearance, especially after a long, weary day of traveling from London in such a hurry. But then, the Bingleys were quite used to racing home on the news that Thomas had taken a turn for the worse. It could not have been the boy’s uncertain health alone that weighed on him.

Well, whatever the cause of his distress, it was all the more reason for Elizabeth to stop tarrying in the woods and return home to help the family resume their comfortable routine. Yet she loved these lonely minutes spent at the base of that yew tree, looking both ways, wondering what she would find.

She chose right, despite having taken the same path earlier that morning on her trip to Meryton. Her choice lacked adventure, but alas, she had not meant this journey to be exciting—only quick, and the right path was shorter by a good quarter of a mile. She had gone to town only to see after Miss Bard, the new music teacher at the Meryton School, feeling some duty to make sure the lady was comfortably settled in her new lodgings.

“A bit rustic, is it not?” Miss Bard had said upon seeing the female staff’s boarding house. Rustic, yes, but also clean, free of charge, and chaperoned by an old widow who made the very best scones in all of Hertfordshire. Elizabeth had not bothered including these modifiers, knowing already that Miss Bard was not long for the school. The music teachers never were; they all seemed to feel themselves too refined for charity work. (“Do farmers’ children really need to learn how to read music?” had been Elizabeth’s favorite question, posed by the very first in a long line of music teachers.) In their letters, these young ladies (or more often, middle-aged ladies without husbands or fathers to provide them an income) tended to gush about the important role they would play in “civilizing” the rural folk. Yet the savagery of Hertfordshire’s commoners—they laughed too heartily, liked jigs better than airs, and smelled like the cows and sheep they helped to raise—always proved too much. In the end, the music teachers preferred their own genteel poverty to the more uncouth version of their pupils.

Elizabeth supposed it was her fault, really, for she regularly employed these refined types in hopes of bringing real distinction to the school. Soon, she would have to capitulate and hire one of the dancing masters in the area who could punch out a tune on the pianoforte with some competence but little style. Yet she could not quite squash the hope that these children might learn, as she had, the beauty of a Beethoven sonata, as well as a good Irish jig. Well, at least it was the music teacher who tended to quit; if it had been the principal academic teacher, who instructed not only reading and arithmetic but also Latin, geometry, and rhetoric, Elizabeth would not have been nearly so qualified to fill in until the replacement arrived. 

There had been a time when she had wondered if Lizzy might want the music position. Her parents would not have objected to their daughter taking work, at least not under the guise of charity, and Lizzy was an accomplished pianist and singer. She had such a way with Thomas that Elizabeth knew she would make a fine teacher to any child. Yet Elizabeth also knew, from both Jane and Lizzy’s letters, that her niece’s days in Hertfordshire were numbered.

Elizabeth Darcy. Her niece would soon become Elizabeth Darcy of Pemberley.

He had not asked her yet—her niece’s Mr. Darcy, that is. Both Lizzy and Jane’s letters had contained such assurances, however, that Elizabeth could not doubt the proposal would indeed come. For all their optimism, Jane and Lizzy were not naive or overconfident. If they believed Mr. William Darcy would propose, then he almost certainly would.

Still, there had been a time when Elizabeth had believed a certain proposal would come, and she had never thought herself naive or overconfident.

Knowing Lizzy was at a precarious juncture in her courtship, Elizabeth had waited as long as she dared before sending word that Thomas had suffered more seizures in the past fortnight than he had in the previous two months put together. He always wanted his parents home, as would any boy of nine who loved and admired his family. Yet with Thomas, only able to express himself through writing, there was no whimpering or whining about missing his parents; there was simply (after several days of particularly terrible seizures) a note, written in a shaky, barely-legible hand: “Ask them please to return home now.” 

Already, the Bingleys had stayed in London an entire five weeks, a week longer than ever they had since Thomas’s birth. Still, Elizabeth waited two days after reading Thomas’s note, two days in hopes that one of those days would bring word from London that the much-anticipated proposal had been made. Perhaps, if she had been a kinder aunt (or one who had fewer memories of another man named Darcy), she might have waited even longer, and yet even those two extra days had felt a betrayal to Thomas, this boy she had come to love like a son.

At least, she supposed it was maternal love—that ache in her chest when she lay on the floor next to him during a seizure. As her own mother had been known to tell her, usually after reading a letter from Lydia, “You cannot know what is like, a mother’s feelings on seeing her child suffer!”

No, she would never know exactly what a mother felt, and yet even now, as she emerged from the wooded glen and saw Lizzy half running down the hill from Netherfield, Elizabeth’s heart swelled with emotion: fear that something was wrong at the house; admiration for this clever, beautiful young lady with her name; and hope that all the Bingley children would find happiness in this uncertain world. In that moment, even a mother of ten might have felt some kinship with this childless spinster.

“Is all well?” Elizabeth called out to her niece.

In reply, the girl—woman, really—threw her arms around Elizabeth and laughed.

“I see you found my gift,” said Elizabeth, admiring the shawl wrapped about her niece’s slender shoulders.

“Oh, for shame, Aunt Lizzy! My enthusiasm has nothing to do with the gift. No, this is my proper greeting! I had so little time to give you the attention you deserved when we arrived home last night.” Then Lizzy brought her aunt’s hand to her lips. “But it is a lovely gift! Wherever did you find it?”

“Do you suppose your aunt so very untalented with the needle that you must accuse her of purchasing rather than making you a shawl?”

“You are the worst needlewoman in the family—and given my own poor workmanship, that is saying something.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I am glad to see that your glittering London friends have not managed to teach you any manners.”

“You will also be glad to know there are as many ill-mannered people in the ton as there are in our little corner of the world.”

“Speaking of ill-mannered members of the ton, how is our dear Lady Dudley?”

Lizzy snorted. “She still insists on calling me Eliza. But otherwise, she has grown very friendly of late.”

“I wonder why that might be. Surely not because rumor has all but married you off to the son of an earl?”

“You will love him, Aunt Lizzy!” Her niece blushed prettily. “I know you will.”

“It hardly matters whether I love him.”

“Of course it matters! I could not possibly marry a man who did not meet with your approval.”

Elizabeth stopped walking. “So, he has asked you. Just before you left town, I presume?”

“What? Oh, no. He has not…that is, we were not expecting to leave town until next week, and so he must have thought…” Lizzy’s hand went to her hair, pulling loose one of the strands and working it into an untidy curl about her fingers. “No, he has not asked me.”

“But you do not doubt him.”

Lizzy’s face flushed bright red. “You must suppose me to be the silliest of girls.”

“No! Of course not. Forgive me, Lizzy. I only meant—”

“When I was with him,” Lizzy said, heedless of her aunt’s attempts to make amends, “I doubted him not a bit. You cannot look William Darcy in the face and wonder at his integrity.”

“Of course not, dearest. You must know I meant no offense.”

“But now that I am home,” her niece continued quietly, “I do doubt, just a little.”

Elizabeth put her arm about her niece’s shoulders—no easy task now that Lizzy stood four inches taller than her. “Your mother told me only last night that your young man was smitten, and Jane Bingley is a much better judge of these things than I am. You must ignore your spinster aunt!”

Lizzy looked down at her. “Were you never in love?”

How could she, who had always advocated the truth, answer truthfully now? It should have been a simple matter of saying, “Yes, I was in love—unexpectedly in love with a man I hardly understood until it was too late,” and yet these words would not come.

“What is love?” she asked instead, flashing a jaunty smile.

“Love is recognizing some fundamental truth about a person. Case in point: I know that when you respond to a question with one of your own, you are desperate to avoid answering.”

Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself. “And does your young man also avoid questions in such a manner?”

“Aunt Lizzy!”

“Oh, very well. Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I was in love. Once.”

That was surely not enough for Lizzy Bingley, who wanted to understand the how and why of all that she encountered. Elizabeth could see the expectation in her niece’s young face: lips parted, eyes wide, as if her entire countenance was open to this story she had never heard.

But Elizabeth could say no more on the matter. She felt wholly incapable of putting Fitzwilliam Darcy into words.

© 2018 Christina Morland

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Thanks for reading. Whatever your relationship to mothering, may you and the mother figures in your life have a joyous weekend!