Prologue (for the reader):
This is my mother's birth month. It is the first birthday since she passed away. I wrote this piece for her for Mother's Day seven years ago.
Last week
Sorting through a drawer of old correspondence
I find innumerable cards from you
Collected over years
Mother who offers loving sentiments,
Support,
Sometimes even a word of reproach
And lots of humor.
The notes are on beautiful hand-painted cards
Or torn scraps of paper.
Rarely, they have arrived on manufactured greeting cards.
Each piece of mail has that distinctive penmanship –
You are the only person in the world who writes like you.
And when I see an envelope arrive in my PO box
With that left-handed tidy or scrawling hand,
I imagine already the contents:
Tidy equals premeditated ease
Scrawling-lettered words tell me that the contents were composed
Under duress – in haste or fatigue or with a lack of well-being.
Sometimes the envelopes are bulging with newspaper pieces or photos
Or forwarded correspondence from others, all assembled from bits into
Wholes.
Sometimes the envelopes are thin, a single scrap carrying
An entire message.
More often than not those envelopes bear messages on the outside too –
“Open here,” “Open carefully,” “P.S. – I forgot to tell you…”
But for my entire life, I have not gone unaffected by the writing -
The notes, the cards
That are yours.
Always my heart moves a bit of a beat faster when I see that envelope,
Your writing
On the envelope – in my PO box, in my hand, on the table, or in a drawer
Of old keepsakes
YOU, who have now seen fifty-four “Mothers’ Days”
(A few more than I have been alive),
Have a way with your children:
A way of keeping in touch
A way of writing
A way of penmanship
A way of making art and blasting music and weaving stories
That is distinctly yours as a mother.
And one of your greatest motherly gifts, is that way you allow us each –
The five of us children of yours –
To call us our own personal names for you
(“Mamacita!”),
To communicate with you in the ways that we each can;
You see how we are individuals, distinct, despite our “sibling-ness.”
I am quite sure that in forty-seven years I have never heard you tell me
To be my sister, or my other sister, or either of my brothers.
I am quite sure that in forty-seven Mothers’ Days, I have never heard you
Tell me to celebrate you more, or less, or better, or differently.
You have lived in your motherhood with a strength and constancy that a
Childless woman (thisdaughter of yours)
Will never be able to comprehend.
You have lived your motherhood well into your senior years with
A written presence, too:
Your writing, your letters – whether a few words on a torn piece of paper,
Or a several-times-drafted missive in that tidy artful penmanship –
Will always be yours, and yours alone.
They will always evoke something indelible, powerful, courageous and
Tender in me.
Thank you for a drawerful of correspondence
Which I use as the pivot point around which to celebrate
Your motherhood this day, this year.
Simply:
Thank you!
Epilogue (for the reader):
How can we drop the stories that do not serve the heart place of compassion? What about those we love can we learn to appreciate while they are still with us here on earth? How can we learn to let go of those conflicts we do not always tolerate well with others? In what ways can we honor the small things, honor the life that is now (rather than waiting until the person has passed on to venerate the precious life that is each of ours to offer to the world)?
(Originally posted for Mother's Day 2012.)
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2019 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
