(kj is graciously filling in for NLinStPaul this Sunday – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Me mum left this earth decades ago and me babies chose not to be born. Seems to me I’m the last person to write an essay on mother’s day. So I’ll throw this out thought out there, and ask for your stories.
The creation energy isn’t limited to our bodies; it isn’t limited to our gender. We– all sexes, all ages– experience the process of conception, gestation, birth and mothering through our projects, our gardens, our loves, our lives. We experience still birth, early death, abortion. We know the power of a two-year-old’s “No!” and rambunctious thoughts that won’t behave. Most of us have colored outside the lines. And we’ve all rocked ourselves, or someone else, to sleep at night.
So, what are your stories of love and creation? Of sunny days in the park and late nights in darkness? Who is your favorite mother? Who is your most troublesome child? What project just wouldn’t take despite the best sex in the world to make it so? And what joy has been just too enormous for a single heart to contain? “I wanna story!” 😉
Because Kokopelli, that rascal, was a mom, too, I’m sure of it!
87 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
welcome! @;-)
… heh. I never had children either … tho I took care of a whole lot of them, babysitting my way to college tuition and having lots of nieces and nephews.
Oh I’m very fertile at that! lol
My daughter from China.
Quotable quotes from when she was a few years old:
When asked to behave, she used to say, “I am being have!”
When asked to explain why she and her friends were fighting, answered, “Everybody just started argurating!”
Passing by two cars after their small accident: “Uh-oh, a fendy-dendy!”
I know, small potatoes. But she’s great.
Now a teenager who rolls her eyes when asked to do her homework; and still has a great heart.
Crazy about her.
Author
was a bit of a ditz. She was vivacious, the middle child of 11 siblings. She was beautiful, she had a bit of a gap in her front teeth. we thought she looked like Jackie Kennedy. My brother started calling her “Mum” in the 60’s and she was “Mum” from then on.
She loved children and was a magnet for them. Everyone came to our house… all her siblings, all their kids, all our friends. She was a fantastic cook and could make meals out of nothing.
We always at the dining room table, except for Saturday lunch. We had either her sister and brother or my father’s parents for dinner (noon) every Sunday with the good china and silverware. I lived in fear of breaking one of the dishes.
When she died, our house fell silent. It has taken years… and weddings and births and deaths… for those of us who remained to bring that energy of hers back to life. I wave to her in heaven when I’m out and about all the time.
We discovered yesterday that the pair of geese hanging around our pond have five goslings. Their heads are barely visible when they walk through the grass, and they paddle through the water in a line, with Mom and Dad at either end.
Author
was also a Democrat, a fierce, loyal Democrat. She met Jack Kennedy (as did my oldest sister). Later he drove by our house and she ran outside and waved and yelled, “Hi, Jack!” and he waved back. She was one of the happiest women alive when he won the White House and was one of saddest when he was killed. She was married to a Republican. They laughed about canceling each other’s vote, but they never failed to vote. My political and social conscious came from her.
my favorite creation
(not to imply I did it alone!)
Author
Please jump and read this essay by NPK if you haven’t already…
https://www.docudharma.com/show…
gone now, gave me the gift of imagination and art. We had no TV in our house until I was 12. She read us poetry and stories instead. She was not very maternal in the normal sense, I think she had kids because it was what one did. It has taken me years to appreciate her as a person and not view her in the role of Mom. We were not allowed to call her mom, she was Gretchen. A strange mixture of the 50’s feminine ideal and a eccentric intellectual, a slave to being a ‘lady’. A snobby social butterfly who gardened barefoot, and was at heart a socialist.
She was a fiery liberal. My Dad would say “Uh oh, Gretchen’s on her soap box”. She loved FDR and Eleanor. She took me to see Eldrich Cleaver in the 60’s when he spoke at Irvine College, in the heart of Orange County. She never however made the leap from suburban housewife married to a stanch Republican to living her ideals and dreams until my Dad died. She was horrified that both her grown children cared not a whit for ‘society’.
She had a trunk filled with travel brochures and pictures of far away places, her dream box. She used to sigh and say when she died she didn’t want to be looking at the hills of the San Fernando Valley where she had been born. Once my Dad died, she moved to Paros, a Greek island, and wandered the world. She died with another vista, one she finally was at home with. I now thank her for being who she was. The gifts she gave may not have been those I wanted, but she did give me the freedom to define my own sense of woman and mother.
The Mom!!!!
Happy Mother’s Day!
Diane
I have a stressful but decent job and I am paid fairly.
One thing I would never do even if Clive Owen walked through the door and took a job at my institution, is sleep with somebody I worked closely with. I know “office romance” has worked rather well for many people but it doesn’t work for me.
Psychologically it is very important that when I go into work I mentally open a door, walk in and then very deliberately shut that door very tightly when I leave. People who don’t do that where I work have a tendency to get burned out and to start running faces, situations, and scenarios in their head.
It isn’t so much that I love my job more than anything in the universe because I don’t, but like anybody in a “helping” profession, I need to have clearly defined boundaries in order to give my best when I am there.
Me and my Mom are really close. Probably because I’m the baby by 6 years, and she was the baby of her family by many years. I still see her every day. 🙂 We even look alike, could almost be clones.
This Mothers Day is a sad one. My Dad died 6 years ago today. They got married when she was 16, and had their 50th anniversary in the December before he died.