Mother's Day, Old and New

My Mom, always a beauty

This week, Poets United's Poetry Pantry is all about Mothers - a celebration of the nurturing spirit of women. I plan to pour myself a coffee, Sunday morning, and peruse all of the offerings. Do check out the Pantry, as there will be some wonderful reading in there Sunday and Monday.

Some of us have children of our own, some of us are loving aunts, and many of us love whatever children the universe sends our way. I raised four children as a single mom, one of the hardest paths in the world, but I wouldn't trade the journey for anything. Then came the grandchildren, four more amazing individuals , here because their mom is here, and because I was here, and because my mother was here.

For a dozen years, I have provided respite care for foster parents, and have loved a stream of little voyagers from rocky paths, many of them with special needs, all of them from fractured families, having already experienced loss and heartache in their short lives. They come to me for peace and warmth and laughter, a time out of time.  I have a sunny little four year old with me this weekend, while his foster mom takes a break. 

I am reflecting much on the nurturing character of women, so hard-wired are we to care for those around us. I wrote a poem for my mom when I was 16 and read it aloud at a school event where she was sitting in the audience. I decided to post that one today. I wrote another poem after her death, and will post that as well - full circle, as these cycles go. My mom and my grandma have been gone for a long time, but they are both strongly within me, and within my daughters and my daughter's daughter: one long line of strong, original, cackling women.

Happy Mother's Day

age 16, 1962

A feeling unexpressed in words

lives in my heart for Mother;

a thought too deep, a turning home

unfelt for any other.

Since time began our two lives ran

parallel paths together;

the years have bound our hearts around

unchanged by any weather.

Protection, shelter, in my need -

a refuge when I sought it.

I picked a flower one baby hour:

love blossomed where I brought it.

A song sang through my infancy:

her voice soothed all my fears,

and silent sympathy washed away

the ache of hidden tears.

I failed when I met life. I tried again.

Mother believed in me.

Too much, she believed, and I tried to be true

to Mother's deep faith in me.

I was launched into life with a dream and a prayer,

adrift on a stormy sea:

but e'er the ebb tide I'll have gained the far side-

her love having sheltered me.

Two weeks after my mother's death in 1994, I was driving towards her home in Port Alberni, just on the outskirts, entering the town. I was thinking of my mom when, in slow motion, as if time had stopped and we were caught fast in that stationary moment, an owl flew slowly across my windshield, so closely I could see every feather, defined. As she flew, she turned her head and our eyes locked together as she slowly flew into the forest. I then remembered I was driving the car,  time started up again, and I drove on. I can see that owl still, remember how everything stood still for those few moments.

I wrote this poem several years later.

The Owl Is the Doorway Into the Unknown

[The title quote is from The Golden Cauldron by Nicki Scully]
September 13, 1999

I sit beside my mother's bed
as she lies dying.
Our eyes meet: all the words we cannot say,
all the missed connections,
misperceptions,
in this lifetime,
it has always been
this way.

I release the ways
we never got it right;
forgive, no need to hold the anger tight.
Just "I love you"
and her spirit
flies away,
out of the room
into the starry night.

Weeks later,
I am driving
towards her home
when, in slow motion,
across my windshield
flies
a gray owl,
feathered being,
infinitely wise,
as she passes looking
deep into
my eyes.

Time is suspended
on this point
of traveling.
Somehow I feel
a message has been
received
and, somewhere in my spirit sore,
unraveling,
I know all is understood
and I believe.

Owl, swooping sideways
into the forest green,
bird between two worlds,
all that we know and the unseen,
harbinger of change,
of mysteries beautiful and strange,
as our eyes meet
I know an Oracle
has been.

Wise watcher in the night,
friend of the moon,
fly after she
who left my world
too soon.

Fly, messenger
of my belated transformation;
and give my love to my mother
in the Spirit Nation.