From MUTHA Magazine
Graffiti Mom: MOMZ1
My son is an artist, a graffiti artist. He is well known for his work among the graffiti crowd across the nation. Responses to this fact are often polarized and narrow to two camps: That’s vandalism! or Street art is cool.
I was 17 when he was born. (If you have the thought at this point that now you understand why my son engages in sub-legal activity, please move along to the next article before I slit my mother heart and spill it onto the page.) In the first days of his life, I was shattered by how delicate he seemed: his tiny fingers, his pink-purple little body with limbs curled in. I felt his fragility as an ache in my body. The space he left inside, still healing, alive with imagined nerves connecting us. I wondered how mothers knew how to do this.
The first time I tried to cut his translucent fingernails, I held my breath. I nicked his finger and he cried. I cried too, then called my big sister, twelve years older and a mother of three.
“I hurt him!” I wailed.
She laughed and comforted me. “It’s okay, it happens to all moms.” [Read more…]
