Mother's Day

Today I spent some time surfing blogs, as I often do. A link on one random site led me to PostSecret: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/. I've been there before, but today I found some Mother's Day comments that made me think.

Some postcards are from mothers who were admitting, possibly for the first time, that they don't like being mothers. Some are from children who are saying, out loud, that they love their mothers, and some from kids who are saying they don't. One card said, "I buy funny cards so I don't have to lie and say I love her". So what's the feeling that keeps you sending the cards?

Mother's Day is right up there among my least favorite days of the year, the others being the day my first baby died (at one day old), the day my mother died, and the day my ex-husband and I dropped off our then-seven-year-old son at the first of many institutions he was to live in. Come to think of it, the day I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer isn't one of my favorites, either.

My son, Adam, just got out of jail. I can only hope he finds a way to stay out. I hope his sister has sense enough not to feed and water his anger and blame for his parents. I have doubts.

Here's an old poem, written ten years ago.
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MOTHER'S DAY

Harkness Beach, 1996

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I am mother-of-pearl among

gull-shattered, blue-black shells

around me.

Spiders sprint, dissolve beneath

the underside of stones.

I have no ear to hear

nor fear

to harm them;

I, lonely woman

seeking clues in these, the tinyest, empty homes.

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I gaze into a mussel shell

no larger than a grain of rice.

Each fragile sheath once housed a life

not so different

from the cells

my womb once held.

The many-colored whelks and curious snails,

false angel wing and delicate pelican's foot--

each held a piece

too common, and now gone

to the greedy urge

of the sea.

Perhaps it is that same cold tidal fee

that pulls my sons and daughters

far from me.

Down on all fours--

panning for gold jingles

and learning how to see--

I fear the quick false move

when pink or bright mauve, glimpsed too late,

is swept forever from this quiet scene.

A dog approaches,

challenging--

retreats in happy foolishness to see

I am a human thing.

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This is a yearly pilgrimage.

This spring I take

dozens of perfect, salt-clean

whelks and colus,

of seed-soul bereft

and with them

moon-white fragments of the mother-of-pearl

the busy gulls have left.

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Perhaps in some far time

when I am changed

(and joined to life-blood of the still impenitent sea)

some aging, shell-shocked child

will visit me.

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