Reflection: For My Mother

THE POEM

“Reflection: For My Mother”

October 6, 2006

All the memories exist somewhere between the busy days, packed schedules, children’s lives, school, and work

The love and laughter of my own now distant childhood reside in the stolen moments of reflection

I close my eyes, turn down the hyper-speed of my mind and reflect

It is to the long, slow, easy days of summer I return

I am a teenage girl sitting with my mother on our front porch

I see us huddled together in waves of conversation and laughter on warm summer evenings

Engaged in talks of my heart’s wishes on love and life’s possibility

My constant wondering and questioning if my heart would be fulfilled, if it would remain unbroken

I can hear even now my mother’s wise countenance and certain reassurances that life will always work out

She just knew that

I sometimes doubted her, resisted her insight but wanted to believe her

I reflect now that she just knew

Not necessarily that life turned out

But that we do survive intact, better, wiser, happier

And that laughter is the best healer

That it takes a thousand muscles to frown

And just one to smile

The wishes of the heart may need to grow up

Still her counsel that life works its way out was true

It has

Witness the love and the connection and coming together

To celebrate and cherish the ones we love

To cherish the Mother we love

I’m attached to the reflections of those summer evenings

As I am attached to her, my mother

And to those sacred memories shared with my mother many years ago as a hopeful young woman

When she had the wisdom to emulate resilience and innocence

This wonderful world of memories forms me, molds me, and shapes me

As a woman who has, too, become a mother

And the best that I can wish for and dream of now

Is to offer to my children

The same wise words that life will indeed always work out

That it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown

And trust that someday they, too, can share a similar reflection

Thank you mom for it all!