Tag Archives: mothers

by

Go Gently into that Good Night

If you’ve noticed my absence for the past few days, it’s because my dear sweet mother transitioned from this life into the vast and unknowable realm of the spirit. I’ve been her caregiver for the last five years, and it was with loving care that I stroked her face, whispered in her ear, and saw on her way.

Anne Peach 1934-2022

This beautiful poem by Sue Vincent and her accompanying photos speak eloquently of the arc of life as expressed through flowers. She wrote it a couple of years before she too passed with grace from this world. I’d like to share it with you now.

Flowers

by Sue Vincent

There were always flowers.

Orchids pinned upon a mother’s breast,

All lace and diamonds.

Long black gloves

And painted lips,

As she left, laughing.

A child who watched

As the door closed.

There were flowers…

Yellow tulips,

Cellophane and ribbon

A girl who blushed

As the curtain fell

Upon the stage;

She cradled them,

A first bouquet.

There were flowers

Roses and lilies

White, in hands and hair,

Their fragrance mingled

With frankincense,

A ghost of awe and wonder

Finding a home

In memory.

There were flowers…

Rainbow hued,

Everywhere.

Greeting a life newborn,

With love and welcome,

Lighting stark severity

As a babe cried.

There were flowers…

Daisy chains

Around his brow,

Crowning him with sunlight,

In laughter,

In simplicity,

In love.

There were flowers,

Three roses,

Red as life,

Placed in a cold hand,

One for each heart

Saying farewell.

Too long,

Too soon.

There are flowers,

Heather and bluebells

Painting horizons

Still unexplored.

Pathways of petals

Laugh at our feet,

Inviting.

In joy or sorrow,

When the tears fall,

There are always flowers.

From:

Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo

by

My Mother’s Song

Image by Sue Vincent

A while ago, I wrote this 99-word story for the Sue Vincent Classic at Carrot Ranch, and I never got around to sharing it here. Sue has since passed away, leaving a hole in our writing community, and I miss her. I hope you enjoy the story.

My Mother’s Song

Even on a day of grief, the living abide no idleness. Bodies need nourishment, goats tending. The hearth yearns for fire before the wind sweeps us all beneath the dirt. I loathe our hill, the leaden clouds and cold toes, black spots on the moldering potatoes.

For years, I’d griped about my tasks while my mother had sung with the rhythm of her washboard. Of a beauty I couldn’t behold.

Now, without her, I face the quilted valley, the snow-laced mountains, branches gilded by the sun. Only now do I see, and my heart bursts with my mother’s song.

by

Monochrome #Writephoto

copyright – Sue Vincent

Monochrome

My mother’s home
bows to the leaden clouds
through withering years
her gravity weights us
frail fingers of need
suspended from my shoulders

She clutches my arm
like a worn-out child
I bear without bending
but why do I feel
my feet have grown tap roots
and I cannot extract them

They are declining together
that house and she
sagging and creaking
water-marked and fractured
fragile veins of rusted pipes
crumbling the foundation of bones

Beauty requires altered eyes
the blurred half-distance of memory
a chorus of overlapping echoes
in party dresses and baby’s breath
when the decay of age was nothing
a coat of paint couldn’t hide

She has lost the sharp-edged borders
scarlet tulips and peach-rimmed roses
glories of the morning in royal blue
black-eyed Susans and apricot orchids
mums in the amber blaze of twilight
winter’s bittersweet

I will remember
her spring blossoms
ceding to blood red chrysanthemums
and garlands of evergreen
until the day I too fade
into monochrome

**

I just got home from another visit to my parents. They’re doing fine but declining, especially my mother. This poem is bleaker than the real situation. It’s just the muse and image tugging me along. Thanks to Sue Vincent for another Thursday #Writephoto prompt. (I missed the deadline, but happily post this anyway.)

by

It’s my birthday and I’ll write if I want to

Turning 60 today. Holy Moley. Yipes.

But I’m 24 on the inside. So there, Father Time!

**

To celebrate, I wrote my first Etheree for Colleen’s #Tanka Tuesday. As part of the challenge, we had to use synonyms of the words begin and fresh.

Journeys

new

babies

toothless smiles

fawn-eyed wonders

how swiftly they spring

from smooth mud-pie fingers

into school girls and lovers

clasped heartbeats of newborn mothers

journeys mapped in our parchment wrinkles

to rock sweet babies in grandmother’s arms

 

by

Voodoo Child

pixabay image

Carrot Ranch has selected the winner of the Rodeo Flashfiction challenge #6. This prompt was a doozy!

Challenge #6: First we had to sign up to receive a real US Rodeo bull’s name from the snickering, evil competition designers…. I received “Voodoo Child” (oh, great).

Then:

  1. Stories are to be 107 words long in 8 sentences.
  2. Stories are to include the two words drawn as your prompt (you may change the order of the words and they do not need to be adjacent).
  3. Write a fictional story that involves facing a challenge or fear.

Voodoo Child

Cici done hate hospitals, but Miss Clara drug her there on account of her drowned daughter, wee girl fixing to die.

“Can you help her?” Miss Clara say, crying and wringing her fingers like washday linens. “Do your… voodoo?”

Cici take no offense, for Miss Clara’s hurt so raw and deep it reach between them like they share a heart. Mothers do when they lose a child. Cici know it a grief to swallow the world.

Cradling the child’s doll, Cici chant some mumbo-jumbo over it like she made of magic. She coo, longing to believe, and pass it to Miss Clara like it a newborn soul.

***

To read Kerry E.B. Black’s winning submission and other judge favorites, click here: Carrot Ranch

by

My Daughter Elopes Today

Scan31

Amber, 1 hour old, 1983

My daughter, Amber, elopes today.

How do I express how much this baby/girl/woman means to me? How I have loved her every moment of her life with the whole of my heart?

I remember the moment she was born, the unconditional love that flooded me with the certainty that I would cherish this tiny person for all my days. I remember looking ahead into her future, at the winding path she would follow, how I would be unable to protect her from the travails of love, from the valleys of life, from failure and disappointment, from loss and gray hair. It made me hold her closer.

We named Amber, after the stone of healing, altruism, and wisdom. The child of my heart has found her way, carving out a life as a loving mother and partner, a caring friend, sweet daughter, and unsurprisingly to me, as a healer.

At the young age of 32, she and her partner of nine years, Shawn, are tying the knot. Celebrations to follow.

LOVE

Scan43

Ambie and me

I love you,
Not only for who you are,
But for who I am
When I am with you.

Scan14 - CopyI love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

Showtime

Showtime

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things

Mother and daughter

Mother and daughter

That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

10858414_10204614878584838_2243817381711395601_n

Ambie and the Overlord

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song…

Author Unknown

rev 2

The renewed family 12/5/2015

by

Mothers and Daughters

My great great great grandmother. Her mother was Indonesian and her father was a Dutch sea captain.

My great great great grandmother. Her mother was Indonesian and her father was a Dutch sea captain.

mothers allMy mother called me and told me I need to drive to Colorado (17 hrs each way) to pick up six boxes of family heirlooms and transport them back to Oregon…Now.

The timing isn’t convenient as I’m committed to weekly babysitting for the Overlord so his mother can work, and I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo for the first time ever. I shall write on the plane…yes, I’m traveling by plane and engaging the services of USPS for the boxes.

My mom grew up in Indonesia where my grandfather worked for the Dutch government. Our family goes back quite a few generations in that part of the world, and we are proud of the sliver of Indonesian heritage that flows through our veins.

My mother still identifies as Indonesian, an assertion that earns her an odd look from time to time. During WWII, my grandfather was interred in a Japanese POW camp. My grandmother and her children escaped that fate – because of those droplets of Indonesian blood.

When I was a girl, my grandmother told me stories of those years, of supporting her children by painting portraits of Japanese officers, of lobbing chickens over the camp wall.  My grandfather, a large man, weighed 95 lbs at the end of the war.

My mother has a few Indonesian plates and vases, batiked linens, wood carvings, and other unusual pieces that I have mused over since I was a little girl and first allowed to touch them. I like old things that are infused with history. I think about the artists who made them, my ancestors who cared for them. Some pieces go back over two hundred years to my great great grandparents. They’re part of our family heritage and as the family grows, these heirlooms will be dispersed to an ever-widening circle of descendants.

Sometime in the next year or so my parents will be relocating to Oregon to live closer to me. My mom has entered a packing frenzy and has begun giving items away in an effort to lighten the load. I asked her not to part with the family history. She doesn’t understand what I mean. She wants me there to explain and so I will go.