My Mother’s Legs
On September 1, two days before my mother Edith passed away on her 96th birthday, I remained glued to her bedside. Treasuring our final hours together, I soothed her with words, song and touch. I wanted her to feel safe, bathed in love and gratitude.
This final time with my mom felt important and sacred. While watching her breath become shallower and more intermittent, something I’d written years earlier unexpectedly popped into my mind. It was my response to the writing prompt, “My mother’s legs,” that I’d composed during a workshop with best-selling author, Laura Davis.
What had emerged during that free-write session were vivid images of my mother’s legs throughout her nine decades on earth, beginning with my vision of her in utero: “My mother’s legs were bent up against her belly, tiny feet and toes peacefully floating in the amniotic fluid of her mother’s womb.” Then I moved to her birth: “My mother’s legs emerged into the light of day, soft and supple. Perfect, tender and unharmed. Innocent of all the hardships they would ultimately suffer.”
I imagined my mother’s three-year-old legs, limp as she lay concussed on the floor of a barn after being kicked in the head by a cow. I pictured her legs at fifteen, crouching on the floor of the airless cattle car transporting her to Auschwitz, hungry and terrified. Then her 16-year-old legs, emaciated and trembling as she struggled to carry a heavy shovel on icy ground. There was a large, open wound on her shin. Her shoeless feet were wrapped in rags.
I evoked my mother’s 36-year-old legs atop a hospital bed in Brooklyn as she gave birth to me, and her 65-year-old legs strolling along Asilomar beach while holding my dad’s hand.
Baby Myra and family, circa 1964
Myra’s parents, Edith and Mendek, circa 1990
I described her 70-year-old legs straining with the weight of the food she carried as she walked up the steep hill to my sister’s house when my sister was ill. My father could no longer drive, and the bus had let them out a quarter mile away.
I recalled my mother’s legs at 90, dancing at her assisted living home with Jose, the kind maintenance man. She’d reached out her hand and asked him to dance when the song “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley started to play.
Edith dancing with Jose, 2019
Writing about my mother’s legs had been revelatory for me. I was able to envision her across her lifespan from an entirely new vantage point—one that was more objective, less self-centered. For maybe the first time, I was able to focus solely on her, rather than on her impact on me. This allowed me to know her better, and helped me set her free from the confines of some of my harshest stories and judgements.
Sitting with my mother as her body was shutting down, that writing exercise moved me to thank her legs for their 96 years of dedicated service. I thanked them for all that they’d done from infanthood to the present—all they’d endured, the lives they’d made possible, and the countless gifts they’d enabled her to give me and my family throughout her life.
After I finished thanking her legs, I moved to express my gratitude to her arms and hands, and then her eyes and mouth. I thanked her heart that had been beating for almost a century, sending blood so reliably through her veins. I thanked her bones, her stomach, her liver, her kidneys, her skin. One part after another, I thanked the physical vessel that had carried her through this extremely long, tumultuous life filled with so much love and so much suffering.
This outpouring of appreciation felt reverent—a deeply satisfying homage to a body so deserving of being honored. It was a beautiful experience I will always treasure.
Myra with her mother Edith one week before Edith passed, August 2024
Three years ago in that writing workshop, I could never have predicted the priceless inspiration that exercise would eventually provide.
It turns out that “My mother’s legs…” is one of Laura Davis’s favorite writing prompts. She explains, “If I said, ‘Tell me about your mother,’ the subject would be so vast, you wouldn’t know where to begin. But writing about something specific, like her legs, immediately takes you to a concrete image. What surfaces will inevitably reveal deeper truths than a piece written on the general topic of ‘my mother’.”
Laura Davis with her mother Temme, two months before Temme passed, May 2014
Laura is a world-famous author whose seven books have sold more than two million copies. I met her twelve years ago, when she led the first writing workshop I’d ever attended, “Writing About What You Can’t Remember” at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. It took place just two months after my father died, and I was awash with intense emotions.
Writing about my dad and my relationship to him was one of the most illuminating and healing experiences I’d ever had. So much so, that I never stopped writing. I also never stopped working closely with Laura, who I am grateful to call my writing mentor.
Laura teaches a free-write method where you write continuously for a predetermined amount of time, going with the first thing your mind flashes on. “Just let your pen lead you,” Laura says. “Never write and edit simultaneously, because the editor will inevitably censor some of your best raw, true images and feelings in its attempt to make your writing ‘acceptable’ or ‘good.’ Don’t cross out. Don’t rewrite. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Just go for the gut, and get the raw material out. You can bring in your editorial brain later.”
Encouraging people to park their perfectionism far away, Laura gives writers permission to write “the worst crap in the world.” she explains, “Writing practice is not about creating a polished piece—it’s about self-expression from the deepest place. What you write as a rough draft can be shaped in a lot of different ways later on, but when you’re first trying to get the raw material out, don’t edit. Just let it fly, let it flow.”
Laura has been writing ever since she kept a diary as a girl. “Putting words on the page quickly connects me with what’s going on in my depths and enables me to tell more of the truth than I seem to be able to tell any other way. I just love language and the places it can take me to. In my workshops, writing also bonds people very quickly into a community. It’s a very powerful, always accessible tool.”
I’m thrilled to be able to share Laura’s wonderful work with you in a free two-hour online workshop on Saturday, November 16 at 10:00 AM Pacific—“Writing for Healing and Self-Discovery.” People fly from all over the world to attend Laura’s workshops, and in two weeks we can all do it from the comfort of our homes.
Please don’t think that you need to be a writer, or “good at writing,” to attend. Everyone is welcome, and everyone can benefit.
As my wise father Mendek Rubin wrote, “The most important thing I have ever done is to become an explorer of my mind and heart. I got to know myself as I really am, rather than who I imagined myself to be.” Writing is a magical tool in this regard. I hope you will join us and experience the power of writing for yourself.
