Sassy had her colt sometime during the night, a female, which is a wonderful mother’s day present, even though we probably won’t be able to keep her. Unfortunately, Sassy wants nothing to do with her, which probably means bottle feeding. At the moment, Corey and Dallas are outside trying to get the colt to take a bottle, and inside, all of the dogs are going crazy trying to get outside to see what’s going on. She has a beautiful blaze going down her face, and she looks like she’s going to be that burnished red like her mother. Dallas says that he’ll name her Annie, because our anniversary is tomorrow. I really wish that I had been around for her birth, but I’m thinking that with the big storm last night and the dropping barometric pressure, we should have guessed that Sassy would be ready.
Oh well. The colt is here now, and she looks healthy. Let’s hope that she stays that way. If we had a barn, we wouldn’t have to send her to Dallas’s house. We could keep her here. One day, with any luck, we’ll have a barn.
Anyway, in the spirit of the day, I found something that I posted 10 years ago, and even though my kids have moved past some of the references, I thought that I’d share it again.
Sometimes I long for the days in which they were small enough to fit in my arms. Sleep-deprived or not, those were some of the best days of my life. But time cedes to no one, and mothers must let go at some point, but that never means that the caring and worrying and deep abiding love ever stop.
I hope you all have a lovely day.
More later. Peace.
Music by Snow Patrol, “Chasing Cars”
Early in the Morning
While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher’s ink.
She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.
My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.
But I know
it is because of the way
my mother’s hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.
“The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.” ~ Honoré de Balzac
Happy Mother’s Day to all of you out there.
My youngest son Brett informed me today that he believes Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to be stupid holidays as they are all about making people spend money . . . Okay . . .
I told him that I agreed that most holidays are greeting card conspiracies for commercialization, but that I was pretty certain that Mother’s Day did not begin that way. And guess what? I was right.
After doing a bit of quick Internet research, this is what I learned about the holiday:
After the Civil War, some attempts were made by women’s peace groups who held meetings attended by mothers whose sons had fought or died in the Civil War. The practice did not extend beyond local level. In 1868, Ann Jarvis (mother of Anna Marie) “created a committee to establish a ‘Mother’s Friendship Day’ to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.” Mother Jarvis had plans to expand the Friendship Day into an annual celebration for mothers, but her death in 1905 prevented her from seeing her dream realized.
Others who were involved in the creation of Mother’s Day include Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day proclamation in 1872, as well as Juliet Calhoun Blakely and her two traveling salesmen sons in 1877. Frank Hering called for a “national day to honor our mothers in 1904.” However, the elder Jarvis’s daughter Anna Marie took up her mother’s cause and is recognized as the creator of the holiday that became national and then international.
Jarvis came up with the idea for a day to honor mothers on the second Sunday in May 1907, which was the first anniversary of her mother’s death. Supposedly, Jarvis persuaded a Philadelphia church to hold a special service for her mother. Subsequently, every church in the country was holding special services. Jarvis even obtained a copyright on the phrase “Mother’s Day” from the Patent Office.
Finally, on On May 9, 1914 after years of letter writing and campaigning by the younger Jarvis, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issued the official proclamation declaring the first Mother’s Day as a day for citizens to show the American flag in honor of sons who had died in war.
In an article in Time magazine in 1938, Anna Marie Jarvis is indeed recognized as the creator of the holiday; however, by the time of the article, Jarvis declared that “whenever she thinks of what the flower shops, the candy stores, the telegraph companies have done with her idea, she is disgusted.” (Brett would have probably liked Anna Jarvis.) Jarvis spent most of her remaining money in her continued efforts to fight to keep Mother’s Day from being promoted as nothing more than another occasion for people to buy expensive gifts, and as we now know, she didn’t succeed.
Border Carnation
Interestingly, Eleanor Roosevelt is pointed out in the same article as saying that flowers are “sweet and nice” but that something “ought to be done for the 14,000 mothers who die every year from childbirth.” I think that many of us have forgotten just how dangerous the entire act of becoming a mother used to be. According to Wikipedia (yes, I used Wikipedia; it’s not a thesis for god’s sake), “global maternal mortality in 2008 at 342,900 (down from 526,300 in 1980), of which less than 1 percent occurred in the developed world.”
As a side note, carnations are considered the official flower of the holiday. The younger Jarvis delivered 500 of them in 1908 as carnations had been her mother’s favorite flower. Today, of course, florists push any flower available, and it was florists in the early part of the century who pushed red carnations for women whose mother’s were still living, and white carnations for women who had lost their mothers.
Now, armed with this information, go buy a single carnation for your mother, and instead of candy or perfume, wash her car or her windows. She’ll thank you for it.
More later. Peace.
P.S. Brett, in the end, every celebration becomes a mere bastardized version of its former self. It is up to you to interpret holidays as you wish, not to follow the prescribed path of those who have trodden before you. You will find that when you attach your own meaning and your own memories to something, in the end, what is precious belongs to you. What Mother’s Day means to me is not what is means to you, and it shouldn’t be. For me, it is a bittersweet day fraught with love and sadness. That is mine. What it becomes for you only time will reveal.
Music by Ronan Keating, “This Is Your Song”
Cradle Song
Her grandfather
had crafted the bed from the hardwood trees
in the dense woods behind the house.
Her mother had lain securely in its curves,
and she, too, had been comforted by its gentle sway.
Years later, spring brought her own girl child.
Each night, she would lay the baby in the cradle,
cover her with a soft blanket,
and soothe her with hushed lullabies
whispered in the summer twilight.
With her hand on the knotted wood
worn smooth by time and love,
the woman would rock the bed gently,
and guide her babe into untroubled slumber.
The tranquility of this evening ritual
became the woman’s talisman for her babe
against the dark and unknown.
Until the day arrived
when the girl-child became ill,
and was taken away
to be succored by strangers.
never to return to the enfolding arms
of the woman or the idle cradle.
After that,
the woman would stand by the cradle in the evening,
and sing quiet songs to the air made silent by her loss.
Alone in the terrible stillness,
she would gather the blanket in her arms,
and inhale deeply—searching for the essence
that might still cling to the barren cloth.
Sometimes, she would stroke the sheets,
her hands seeking warmth
from the hollow where the baby’s head had lain.
Once, she found a single, dark hair,
She wrapped it in white tissue and placed it in a box,
along with a small, cloth doll
and a faded red bow she had tied in her daughter’s hair
one fall morning.
Her husband never understood
her need to find solace from things no longer used.
He wanted to remove the cradle,
the source of her pain.
But she asked him to leave it
until the trees were heavy again with spring blooms,
until she could imprint all that the child had been,
before time began to fade the image,
and she would be left alone,
with nothing but remembrance, an empty cradle
and echoes of soft night songs of love.
“Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines
and forget about hope. Time goes running, even
as we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.” ~ Horace
Cabo San Lucas, image by cabo-sailboats.com
Long time no post. It’s peculiar, but every time I opened my blog, the picture of the woman with the anti-semitic posters greeted me, which disturbed me, so I closed my blog without writing. Finally, I decided that I could either keep getting put off by something in my post, or I could write a new post to replace the one that causes me so much disquiet. So I’m posting.
Besides, my stats are taking a big hit with no new posts, and I don’t need anything else to fret about in my fret-filled life.
Yesterday, I witnessed something that was astounding. Brett and I were in the waiting room at his doctor’s office. She is always running late, so spending time in the waiting room is tedious but anticipated. I usually take something to read, but not yesterday. It’s a very busy office, so the check-in window has two people sitting there to greet people, check them in, take money, make follow-up appointments—the usual. In my subconscious I heard one of the women say, “May I help you sir? Sir? Oh well, I guess you don’t like me. May I help you ma’am?
The woman was obviously joking and making light of the line of people waiting to be helped. However, when said man got to the front of the line, he demanded to see whoever was in charge, “right now!” He went off for about 5 minutes without pausing, saying how she had made a joke at his expense (for which she apologized profusely), accused the office of having deep-rooted problems (it’s a therapy office, you think there are problems?), his voice getting louder and louder with each word. By this time, the woman sitting next to me was transfixed, and the man across from me was clenching and unclenching his hands, clearly ready for a confrontation.
The obstreperous man at the window went on: It’s not so funny now, is it? I’m the one laughing now . . . How dare they make fun of him . . . ya da ya da ya da. I looked at the woman next to me, who said, “You know, I thought that he was joking at first.” To which I agreed. He obviously was not joking. I told the woman that he was precisely the kind of person who went postal.
At that moment, Brett’s doctor called us into her office. Unfortunately, the loud man had been moved into the hallway right outside Brett’s doctor’s office, and he was now yelling at the office manager, who told him that if he didn’t calm down, he would be removed from the patient list. Apparently, this man must do something disruptive each time he comes for an appointment because I heard the manager say to him that he needed to call before he arrived at the office for his appointments so that they could avoid these scenes.
Man oh man. What is it with people that they feel the need to be noticed, no matter what? If the complainer was upset by what the receptionist said, he could have just said that to her, given her a chance to apologize and moved on. But no. He had to turn it into a major case in which he, the aggrieved, was intentionally belittled and the entire office was out to get him.
At one time in my life I had thought that I would have made a good therapist. Yesterday reminded me of why that would not be true: Patience in the face of rampant boorishness is just not my strong suit.
“I don’t know where I was going to lead these thoughts, or where I might want to lead them. It’s a foggy, humid, hot day, sad, without threats, monotonous for no reason . . . I’m slowly filling white paper—the paper for wrapping sandwiches they give me at the cafe, because I don’t need better and any will do, so long as it’s white—with lazy traces made with a rhombic pencil. And I’m satisfied. I sit back. The afternoon fades monotonously, without rain, in a discouraged, uncertain tone. And I stop writing because I stop writing.” ~ Fernando Pessoa from The Book of Disquiet
Sailboats in Sydney Harbour
So, the temperature around here went from the 60’s to a current high of 88 degrees. It’s muggy, humid, and too warm for April. Why am I not surprised?
I spent the weekend doing taxes: our taxes and Eamonn’s taxes, federal and state for both. We already received notification that we will not be getting our federal refund again this year because the government needs the money more than we do. Not. We are getting a small state refund, but of course, that is already spent.
So I worked on taxes for two days, and then spent yesterday recovering. When we got home from Brett’s appointment, I read. I thought about posting, but just couldn’t find the energy to do so. Brett is on spring break, and I am on perpetual break.
I had asked my ex if he would contribute towards all of the senior fees that Brett has upcoming. When I first mentioned it, he was reasonable and said to tell him how much I needed. When I told him now much I needed (which was half), of course, he balked. Surprisingly, he did manage to come through. I mean, we have to order Brett’s cap and gown, pay for his graduation announcements, buy his yearbook, on top of paying for his SAT, college applications, etc. I don’t think that I was being unreasonable to expect him to come up with half. But quite frankly, I don’t really care if he thinks that it was unreasonable. I have let him slide on so many things over the years because it is easier than dealing with his attitude.
Wednesday is Alexis’s follow-up appointment with the neurologist in which he is going to discuss her MRI and her EEG and come up with some kind of game plan. I want her to talk to him about her sleeping habits as she has missed work a couple of times because she has not heard all of the alarms. One day she woke up at 3 in the afternoon. Her friend had called her. Mike had called her. Her boss had called her. Four alarms went off. She slept through all of it. How is that possible? Fortunately, the people at her job are being very understanding at the moment, but I expect that that will not last after this appointment with the neurologist. It’s been a wait-and-see for them (wait to see what caused her seizure before deciding how to handle it).
“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.” ~ Honoré de Balzac
Sailboat at Porto Koufo, Greece
Corey has a spring cold. The pollen is not helping. This week, he only works two days, and both of those are for training, which means he will make less per hour. He has told me that when he is at a port and sees the tugboats, he longs to be on one. I know how much he misses doing his real job. He read an article in his work magazine that said that shipping is not picking up as fast as they had anticipated for 2010. Really? I think that we knew that.
I really thought that he would be working for Vane Brothers by now, but they are still not bringing on any new people. The unfortunate reality is that Corey made more money on unemployment than he is making at this job, and the logic escapes me. I mean, port security is kind of a big deal around here. Port security has been a big deal ever since 9/11. Given that reality, am I the only one who thinks that the people tasked with watching these boats should be paid more than someone who is selling men’s clothing at a department store?
Apparently, I must be. Of course, there is that whole thing about being glad for what you have, being grateful for having a job, which of course, we are. But both of us also know that Corey would be much happier on a boat doing what he has been trained to do and earning what he is worth. It’s not the money that he loves about being on a tugboat. It’s the job itself. The money is nice, but the satisfaction means more.
Anyway, that’s about all for now. More later. Peace.
Music by Regina Spektor, “Field Below”
I read this on Crashingly Beautiful, and it seemed appropriate to my discussion about boats:
Cradles
Along the quay, the great ships,
that ride the swell in silence,
take no notice of the cradles.
that the hands of the women rock.
But the day of farewells will come,
when the women must weep,
and curious men are tempted
towards the horizons that lure them!
And that day the great ships,
sailing away from the diminishing port,
feel their bulk held back
by the spirits of the distant cradles.
Lola's Curmudgeonly Musings 