Mother's Day A poem for all who mother,
As a verb,
As a noun,
Who are called into becoming as you help others to become by Janine Sarandolo There are some mothers we can celebrate with fanfare,
Or with a cake that we baked right from the box.
Some live on only in our memories now,
Their legacy transcending the dirt,
Their imprint a fingerprint in the dust that has begotten life somehow.
Some want to bear children,
Yet their wombs or timings might have other plans.
Some prefer cats to kids,
And they mother in many ways no less.
Some don't talk to their mothers anymore,
Sometimes pain eclipses softness in this season.
Some never knew their mom at all,
And she exists as a tale or fantasy or memory from a dream.
We mother in the ways we know how,
By nurturing things,
By shepherding them,
Fighting for them,
Loving them with more colors than we knew love had in its palette.
To give birth,
Surrender.
No seed ever sprouted along the pathways of worry or even desire.
No seed ever listened to being forced,
Figured out,
Or cajoled into what it already is,
No.
To become anchored,
Become free.
Mothers know the language of your beginning.
Before you,
She didn't know she was a mother,
But as you entered her heart and left her body,
You gave her a job she can never undo,
The one of being the sun,
The rains,
And the ready soil that gives you life by leading her own with you in mind.
She knows that the seed has within it all the makings of the mighty oak.
She knows that she can only plant into the ground what wants to bloom,
Tending with her attention to its growth with water and pruning and song.
The rest is in the hands of the grandmother,
Sweet-teeming orb of life living itself she fashioned both of you out of a single glint,
A drop of milk,
A passion for what's possible and a disdain for anything fixed.
Mother soothes by receiving instead of giving.
Her example is in the way she caresses her own skin so that we love the ones we're in,
The one she gave us,
The one that can never blossom or be shed without thanking her first.
