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Saturday, May 12, 2018

I Miss You, Mom and Wawa

 For Mother's Day 2018
(For politics, please scroll down)

Mom, soon after she came from East Tennessee to Washington, D.C., in search of employment during the Great Depression:



Mom's mother (Wawa), in her young days:



Mom and Wawa in later years, circa 1976. Mom was in her early 60's and Wawa in her late 70's:

24 comments:

  1. I never lost as much but twice ––
    ____ and that was in the sod.
    Twice have i stood –– a beggar ––
    ____ before he door of God

    Angels twice descending
    ____ reimbursed my store.
    Burglar! Banker! –– Father!––
    ____ I am poor once more.


    ~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

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  2. _____ THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS _____



    Sundays too my father got up early

    and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
    
then with cracked hands that ached
    
from labor in the weekday weather made

    banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

    

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

    When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

    and slowly I would rise and dress,
    
fearing the chronic angers of that house.



    Speaking indifferently to him,
    
who had driven out the cold

    and polished my good shoes as well.
    
What did I know, what did I know

    of love’s austere and lonely offices?


    ~ Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

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  3. I remember, I remember.
    The house where I was born,
    The little window where the sun
    Came peeping in at morn;
    He never came a wink too soon,
    Nor bought too long a day;
    But now, I often wish the night
    Had borne my breath away.
     
    I remember, I remember
    The roses, red and white,
    The violets, and the lily-cups,
    Those flowers made of light!
    The lilacs where the robin built,
    And where my brother set
    The tree is living yet!
     
    I remember, I remember.
    Where I was used to swing,
    And throught the air must rush as fresh
    To swallows on the wing;
    My spirit flew in feathers then
    That is so heavy now,
    And summer pools could hardly cool
    The fever on my brow.
     
    I remember, I remember
    The fir frees dark and high;
    I used to think their slender tops
    Were close against the sky;
    It was a childish ignorance,
    But now 'tis little joy
    To know I'm farther off from Heaven
    Than when I was a boy.

     
    ~ Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

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  4. How fondly I remember
    ––– the days when mothers cared
    And tried till the last ember
    ___ died to teach that what we dared
    To say in gleeful wild defiance
    ___ was unworthy and insulting
    A bane to self-reliance
    ___ 'cause old Nick we were consulting.

    Today, as though besotted
    ___ by an ancient witch's potion
    Our mothers mores rotted
    __ to Old Nick they've pledged devotion
    And children free to shout and curse
    ___ and freely masturbate
    Live lives immeasurably worse
    ___ for being profligate.


    ~ FreeThinke

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  5. _______ A Mother’s Prayer _______

    Ask me not to tell you it’s all right to
    Make yourself a slave to vice and sin,
    Or ignorance and laziness –– the blight to
    Talent’s promise of fulfillment. In
    Hell of impotent inertia keeps
    Each dear child of God who will not work.
    Rising in my breast desire leaps
    Savagely in prayer that those who lurk ––
    Preying in the shadows in our youth ––
    Realize no hold on you, my child.
    Ardently I pray you’ll love the Truth ––
    Yearn for the sublime and undefiled.
    Earning freedom is a much task.
    Reach for that, my child, it’s all I ask.


    ~ FreeThinke - The Sandpiper

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  6. I hope you see them again someday AOW.

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  7. Do not stand at my grave and weep 

    I am not there. I do not sleep.
    
I am a thousand winds that blow.
    
I am the diamond glints on snow.
    
I am the sunlight on ripened grain. 

    I am the gentle autumn rain. 

    When you awaken in the morning's hush
    
I am the swift uplifting rush
    
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
    
I am the soft stars that shine at night. 

    Do not stand at my grave and cry;
    
I am not there. I did not die.


    ~ Mary Elizabeth Frye (1905-2004)

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    Replies
    1. FT,
      One of my favorite bits of verse.

      Mom’s, too! She instructed that something similar be read at her funeral.

      Delete
    2. I'm glad of that, AOW. Although I'm sorry I can't tell them directly anymore how much they meant to me and grateful I am for everything they gave, I feel their presence in my life as though they were still with me –– which I believe they ARE, because i often see situations thrpugh theur eyes, and know exactly how they'd respond. It may skund odd, but my parents and I –– and other loved nes as well –– can still share a laugh together.

      We will be together as long as I still have a memory.

      By the way, I was impressed by how closely your mother and grandmother resembled each other at a certain point in each of their lives. Did yur family male a big thing of that, or was it hardly
      noticed?

      Delete
    3. Yes, they do look like entries in on of those mother daughter look-a-like contests.
      Pretty must run in the family.

      Delete
    4. Ed,
      **blushing**

      Mom came to Washington and took on "city ways."

      Wawa came to Washington and did not take on city ways. She once held off the power company at gun point so that high tension lines weren't anchored here on this property. A little old lady with a high-powered rifle. And she was a crack shot, too: she regularly shot chicken hawks out of the sky with one shot for as long as she had chickens.

      Delete
    5. Love that rifle story. Happy Mother's Day.

      Delete
    6. Grit must run in the family also. :)

      Delete
    7. Ed,
      Definitely! In fact, when I would complain as a child, my mother would order me, "Grit!"

      Delete
  8. It's a lovely tribute, and wonderful to remind the young that all those old, slow, wrinkled people were once as they are now.

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    Replies
    1. Baysider,
      One point I am making with this blog post.

      Delete
  9. Actually, we thought that Mom looked more like her father (Wawa’s husband); Wawa looked a great deal like her own mother. Mom had Wawa’s coloring, however: auburn hair with freckled skin.

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  10. Abraham Lincoln:

    “God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.”

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  11. A fellow named Sigmund Freud,
    Whose thoughts never should be empleud
    Said "You can blame no one other
    "Than your dear old mother
    "That your failed life was never enjeud."


    ~ Anna Haesslicher-Freudinstein

    ~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|

    The after effects of a mother's neg;lcts
    May spoil her boy's orientation to sex
    But the converse is worse if she overprotects:
    The pattern of Oeidipus wrecks!


    ~ Felicia Lamport - Scrap Irony (1961) - illustrated by Edward Gorey

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. I took from them, and took from them
    And never let them know
    How very much they meant to me,
    And how I loved them so.
    Somehow the debt was never paid,
    So I’ll forever owe,
    A debt I cannot hope to pay.

    Before I could wake up
    To say what I should say
    They had left this earth
    So, now I am forsaken,
    Ne’er to be redeemed
    For gratitude not given.
    And so the best thing I could do
    Was help fulfill their dream.


    ~ FreeThinke

    ReplyDelete

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