“Are You My Mother?”
Photo/Mary Graham.
By Layla Muhammad
This essay is dedicated to all the amazing women in my life who have helped me along the way.
I’m not sure when it started, or why, but for as long as I can remember I have been deathly afraid of birds. If I see one on my path, I will move to avoid it. If my friends see one near, they will shield me or shoo it away. Whatever you imagine my reaction might be, make it 10 times more dramatic.
It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, but something in the depths of my soul reacts violently when I even think about them. So, when my older sisters said our mother told us to think of her when we saw hummingbirds, I couldn’t quite make the connection to something I hated so deeply with someone who I love so dearly. After she passed in 2007, I couldn’t help but reject that any bird could remind me of my mother. In the following years, while my sisters could make that connection, getting matching hummingbird tattoos, I never felt the presence of our mother in my life no matter how hard I searched for her.
In January 2020, I was planning on studying abroad after I graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I grew to resent Las Vegas, my hometown, and thought the only way I could discover who I was as a young adult was to endlessly travel the world. I wanted to experience what my grandma, mother, and aunt were seeing in the pictures of them traveling—hoping that following in their footsteps would build the connection that seemed even farther since my aunt passed in October 2019.
As the concern grew for the impending pandemic, the study abroad programs were slowly cancelled and traveling became one of the most dangerous things you could do. The thing that I relied so deeply on to get me out of Las Vegas and connect me with my mother was out of reach. Like many of us, I struggled with the changes. I gave up on my last semester of school when I realized that I couldn’t pay my university bill, slept for most of my days, and got quieter. At the time, I was also living with my stepfamily feeling like the guest who had overstayed their welcome by a year. I felt the absence of my mother more than ever after 13 years.
The days passed and I eventually emerged from my room to realize the beautiful family of strong women that surrounded me. My stepfamily has been in my life since I was three years old, and the conversations we started to have during lockdown about the past and our lives helped strengthen my relationship with them as an adult. We bonded over the confusion and uncertainty that we faced and leaned on each other for support and motivation. Instead of staying in my room for days, I sought out my sisters, stepmom, and niece, and we found activities to break up the monotony of our summer days. This trend continued as I expanded my bubble to include my closest friends.
Over time I began to see that the people I relied on were all women, even in the years prior to 2020. From managers and coworkers, to my best friends, to my six older sisters. When I was at my lowest, it was always one of these indomitable ladies that picked me up. We laughed, cried, went on road trips, practiced our British accents, and watched every reality TV show ever made. For the first time, my sisters were talking to me about the painful unresolved feelings we kept in our hearts.
The more I interacted with my bubble in 2020, the more I noticed the unnerving presence of birds in my life. Someone would send a terrifying picture to the group chat without thinking, we would get swarmed by geese at picnics, and one friend even stepped on a dead seagull on the beach. My fear of birds, ornithophobia if you will, was triggered everywhere we went. There was always a reason to talk about birds, and it has become a joke among everyone I know. I didn’t mind their jokes because they were accepting when I acted crazy and possibly embarrassed them in public to run from an incoming flock. It was another thing for us to bond over.
The challenges continued as the year dragged on. Toward the end of 2020, our rent skyrocketed, and my household reconsidered our living situation. I had always wanted to live alone so I seized the opportunity and found my own apartment. With COVID-19 restrictions, I couldn’t tour in-person, so I walked into my unit for the first time on move in day. Low and behold, I immediately encountered the issue that was tailor-made to ruin my dream: my patio had a pigeon problem.
Living alone, I had no friends or family to shield me from daily interactions with birds. Shooing them off my patio was, and still is, a daily chore. Every method I’ve been allowed and could afford to try has eventually been rendered useless because the pigeons eventually realize that the fake owl or light refractors aren’t a threat. Two nest removals later, the pigeons are as bold as ever; not even budging when I try to shoo them away. It’s become the bane of my existence to the point where even I find it funny now.
As someone who searches for signs to gauge whether I’m on the right path, this seemed like a very bad one. As much as I wanted this apartment to work out, it is one problem after the next. I was sitting in my friend’s backyard lamenting about the pigeons when I spotted a hummingbird on their fence. It stayed there for a while as if listening to me talk about my problems. Not long after that I dreamt about my mother for the first time. That morning, like every morning, I woke up to the sounds of pigeons cooing on my patio.
Even though I forgot the dream almost instantly, sitting alone in my apartment I realized the connection to my mother that I was searching for had already manifested itself in my life through the various women that have guided me to finding the person that I am today. I can always find a hummingbird near when I’m in the presence of these women. The ultimate sign that I am on the right path. The emptiness I felt within myself was filled with love as I looked into the faces of the women that I now believe were placed in my life to protect me. Between my tribe and the birds, from the people I love to the species that terrifies me, I feel my mother’s presence everywhere.
We all get visited by hummingbirds frequently now, and when I see them, I can’t help but think, are you my mother?
Layla Muhammad is an African American writer born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. She received her BA in English and Economics from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is a program coordinator at Black Mountain Institute and associate producer for Black Mountain Radio. Her passions include poetry, performance art, travel, and social justice.
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