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
(this daughter of yours)
Will never be
able to comprehend.
You have lived
your motherhood well into your senior years with
A written
presence, too:
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!
*
* *
For the reader:
How can we drop the stories about others 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)?
May I practice embracing
now the small things (penmanship;
ragged pieces of papers with heartfelt notes; crookedly-cut art paper with
paintings-turned-greeting-card…), and may I practice expressing now to those I love even these small things.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.