Parenting books will often describe a moment wherein a baby sees herself in a mirror and begins to understand the concept of a self that is separate from the mother. The reader of “Mothers” does not know the speaker’s age in the sections of the poem that travel back in time to childhood. However, while the child is not a baby—she rises from her bed and makes her way to the kitchen by herself—she is young. She “stumbled into the kitchen” (Line 13), perhaps because she “had wet / the bed” (Lines 15-16). Her memory is a little fuzzy, but she knows, absolutely, that “mommy always sat in the dark” (Line 11). She is young, but she is about to experience an awareness beyond that of the baby who discerns a self in the mirror.

The speaker says, “i remember the first time / i consciously saw her” (Lines 7-8). She sees her mother “sitting in a chair” (Line 17), “bathed in moonlight” (Line 18). The moonlight itself is “diffused through / those thousands of panes” (Lines 18-19). Articulated through narrative and metaphor, the child sees her mother for the first time as a person who might suffer the pains of existence.