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:
Happy Mother's Day, AoW!
ReplyDeleteI never lost as much but twice ––
ReplyDelete____ 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)
_____ THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS _____
ReplyDeleteSundays 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)
I remember, I remember.
ReplyDeleteThe 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)
How fondly I remember
ReplyDelete––– 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
_______ A Mother’s Prayer _______
ReplyDeleteAsk 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
I hope you see them again someday AOW.
ReplyDeleteDo not stand at my grave and weep
ReplyDeleteI 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)
FT,
DeleteOne of my favorite bits of verse.
Mom’s, too! She instructed that something similar be read at her funeral.
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.
DeleteWe 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?
Yes, they do look like entries in on of those mother daughter look-a-like contests.
DeletePretty must run in the family.
Ed,
Delete**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.
Love that rifle story. Happy Mother's Day.
DeleteGrit must run in the family also. :)
DeleteEd,
DeleteDefinitely! In fact, when I would complain as a child, my mother would order me, "Grit!"
It's a lovely tribute, and wonderful to remind the young that all those old, slow, wrinkled people were once as they are now.
ReplyDeleteBaysider,
DeleteOne point I am making with this blog post.
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.
ReplyDeleteWishing you a wonderful day.
ReplyDeleteAbraham Lincoln:
ReplyDelete“God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.”
Article.
DeleteA fellow named Sigmund Freud,
ReplyDeleteWhose 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
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI took from them, and took from them
ReplyDeleteAnd 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