MOTHER'S DAY MORNING

Another rainy morning.  Another morning to linger in bed longer than usual, my dog on the floor, atop the books and pillow left below.  It's Mother's Day, so why shouldn't I indulge myself.  And my dog.  My daughter is far away in Texas.  My husband farther away in Spain.  Why shouldn't I be a slugabed, listening to the rain on the roof, my dog snoring?  Sipping coffee that's rapidly growing cold.  (Our mornings have been cool lately, here in the mountains.)

The only thing that disturbs me is a question.  How many mothers can lie thus, this morning?  We hear much being made of motherhood.  Mitt Romney's wife calls it the "golden crown."  Religious conservatives praise it non-stop.  Too many of our politicians use that "golden crown" image to fight programs and laws that have made life a bit better for mothers in this country.  In a deep recession, mothers need those programs and laws more than ever.

And what of the mothers in gay relationships, whether they be male or female "mothers"?   Our caretakers are always our mothers, if by that we mean our nurturers, even if they only empty bedpans and give sponge baths.  If we going to honor and celebrate mothers on this day, we should consider the diverse spectrum of motherhood.  We should honor those mothers with real consideration, not with hypocritical sound-bites.

My own mother lives in SW Georgia.  I will be telephoning her as soon as I publish this post.  My brother and I are lucky; our mother has a 24 hour caregiver, and our family can afford to have her, this generous, funny, gossipy woman who loves my mother like a sister.  I celebrate her.  But I also celebrate those mothers who have no such caregiver in their last years, and I honor the mothers who struggle to deal with the costs, both financial and emotional, of late-life family care, after spending so much of their lives tending children and, more and more often, grand-children.  Hallmark cards are fine. So are flowers.  Some day after day honest celebration and consideration of Mothers, not just our own,  would be even better.

Happy Mother's Day to all of those who nurture and sustain the people around you.

Happy Mother's Day to all of those honor and sustain the mother who sustains us, this blue-green planet with her wildflowers and wonders.   Her hungry mouths.  Her many creatures huddled under leaf and brush and creek bed on this rainy Mother's Day morning.

SOLACES

Saturday morning.  Still in bed, trying to wake up.  I can see it's cloudy outside, probably rain headed our way.  Like my friend Vicki Lane,  I feel burned out from talking about politics, mostly the passage of Amendment One,  and want to think about the good things that have happened recently.

One of those has to be the Wildflower Pilgrimage over in the Great Smoky Mountains Park back in April.

 Everywhere the sound of rushing water!  What better  background music to  Star of Bethlehem,  a not so common wildflower in this portion of the mountains.   Along the the Little River trail, an old logging road, we found several patches.

The word that pink Lady Slippers lay ahead on the Porter's Creek trail had everyone excited.  Cameras clicking,  pilgrims gathering around the altar of Lady Slipper.  After they left I walked back and had my own few moments of adoration.

There was rain, plenty of it, along the Lynn Camp trail.  Maybe that's why the fairies like it so much, lifting their wands out of the leafmold, creating their own faeryland.   Large gardens of Fairy Wand lay under the trees along the way.

 

A good place to be when you've grown tired of the mess that humans make of this planet.   Out with the wildflowers and whitewater,  the music of woodlands, the Blue Ridge where I am glad to live, I forget  the angry  debates about God and God's commands.  Here I find  Creation itself,  quietly unfolding, as it has since the beginning of what we call Time.

A LITTLE BIT OF GRACE

It's been  a while since I last clicked "publish" for a post on this blog.   Some Internet issues.  Some other issues.  Aren't there always issues?  How did that word come to be so common in our current speech?  For me, old fogey --or fogeyette--that I am, "issues" means journals, magazines, newspapers.  Bibliographic information.  Footnotes.  Or obituary terms for descendants or lack of. "She died without issue."  To me in writer mode, that means, poor thing, she died without ever getting published.  No issues of The New Yorker with her poems in them.  Just as well, I'd say.  Better not to be among the poets I've been reading lately in that magazine.  Nice people all of them, I'm sure.  But, you know, there are times when I think we have too many poems and stories buzzing around us, too many blogs, too much static of just about every kind grabbing at us.  Twitter.  Facebook. Flikr. All those links.   So many links everywhere you turn.


Truth is, I like links, I like writing about links in the chains that are both our bondage and our empowerment.  Family links.  Marital links.  The maddening links of child and parent.  Human and landscape, both inner and outer. The links with friends who can make you feel energized or depressed.  Inspired or envious.  I like the links some blogs painstakingly piece together, like the beautiful "Ornamental," created by my friend Nina Bagley, who lives in Whittier, North Carolina. She's an artist in just about every sense.  I don't know if she can sing, but I'd bet good cash money that she can.   She's a book/metal/jewelry artist who lives with her dog Walter, whom she takes on outings to the creek where he dives into the water like the good Springer Spaniel he is.  Visit her blog and enjoy a creative woman's perspective on everyday light and shadow.  Am I envious of her blog?  You bet.  Do I learn from it, enjoy it, relish the gorgeous photographs, her commentary that deserves something better than the stodgy word "commentary"?  Well, I woke up this morning wanting to set my laptop humming, so that I could visit her blog yet again.

 Her  posts have set me thinking.   Beyond the gray and grind of drawing closer and closer to my 70th year,  the sun still fires up the clouds outside my kitchen window, still beckons me to the doorway to watch it making its big farewell over-the top wildfire of clouds beyond my porch.   Maybe those gypsy clouds are the answers to questions I've been asking about blogging.

Why do I want to come back to this blog?  What makes me take the time on this never again to be late May afternoon, when I can see a blue so blue  through the trees that I want to leap into it from where I sit here in my living room.   That would take more coordination and sheer imaginative skill that I can muster right now, that leap, but maybe that's really what anybody who has blood still pulsing through the body  tries to do, however she can do it.  Leap right into all that green, making straight for that blue, then maybe deciding she liked the green better, the dirt better, and letting herself drift, or plummet, oops!, back again amongst all those links, all those duties, those roots.  Dust.  Dog hair.  Another meal to conjure out of leftover onions and zucchini.  More dishes to wash.

But then, I ask, 'So what?"

Do we have to go about sharing with everybody every little leap and lizard in our lives?  The turquoise lizard, for example, that skitters whenever I open the glass door to see what the dogs are barking at.  The elderberry sauce I made last summer to drizzle over pork chops.  How do we choose among all the stories, recipes, poems, posts, advice and warnings from Dr. Oz and Suzanne Somers?  I don't know.

All I do know right now is that my friend Nina's words and images have set me thinking about why we do what we do.  Or don't do.   Only connect,  E.M. Forster, that invaluable, brilliant, humane English novelist  nobody reads anymore  urged.  Make an honest connection.  That's what I want.  With a little poetry in it.  A little light sifting down through the green.  A little bit of grace.