Wolf-Mother-Daughter

Wolf–Mother–Daughter May 16, 2007

We are as distant as we shall ever be, my mother and I. I do not wish for the quiet, day-to-day hell of her life–my heart and lungs long for adventure, the “thrill of the hunt”, so to speak, while she is like a den mother who fetches meat for her single young, knawing on the necks of the older ones, forcing them out like so many pricks in a paw. Her eye is keen on what work we do, what food we take, what food we bring back and are intent on keeping for ourselves; everything is for the family, until it is her own, or her mate’s, or the child’s, and then suddenly the older cubs can fend for themselves. No matter that no other den exists within a week’s distance, no matter that food is scarce and difficult to find, no matter that sharp, pointed branches poke into the heaving bellies and aching veins of the older young as they try to find way through thorny underbrush and lie low from the point of the hunter’s rifle.
No matter that the eldest cub nips her tail to its quick; tears fur from flesh; and pulls from paws claw after claw after claw.
The whole story would be impossible to reveal through a wolf’s perspective, for a wolf does not normally keep her young for more than a year, and boyfriends, rules, and acceptance rarely, I am sure, come into play. Extended family means nothing to a wolf other than a familiar scent and perhaps some bad blood. The wolf raises its own nuclear family. But what happens to the young pups who are forced away, into the cold and bitter loneliness of the forests, to try to find a mate to create a family of one’s own or else die with none?
Not ever have I felt more like a wolf than now. And yet things are much different. My mother wants me out of the house, my father wants me out of the house. I cannot really trust my step mother or step sister, nor could I ever trust my step father or my brother. Now that I have finally begun to find my way, with a man I truly love as my own, I have perhaps shirked what few responsibilities I have. Because my nuclear family is divided, and no one seems to want me, my only remaining option is to live on my own, but since suicide is a constant threat, and my love is the only thing that keeps me happy, I would much enjoy, I think, to have us reside in a den of our own. No pups would frolic about for a decade or more, but careers could blossom while love still exists, and through one another we could create our own kind of family.
So for now I howl long and hard, trying to keep my teeth from my fur, and to keep from leaping from this cliff where I sit. But all I’ve to do is remember the scent of my lover and the families that do not want me can be eliminated–for he is the only one.
He is the only one.