On that special day that the calendar tells us to honor our mothers, we do so in each and every moment when we choose how to live this wonderful life we have been gifted, a fact we sometimes forget. All too often the only perspective we use is our own. This poem struck me deeply with its power to bring sensitivity by looking at life from the place of “other”.
What more generous gift could a mother give to guide her child than that and the acknowledgment of fallibility spoken about herein?
Thank you, Mom.
MOTHER’S DAY (TO MY CHILDREN)
I do not doubt you would have liked
one of those pretty mothers in the ads: complete with adoring husband and happy children. She’s always smiling, and if she cries at all
it is absent of lights and camera,
makeup washed from her face.
But since you were born of my womb, I should tell you: ever since I was small like you
I wanted to be myself — and for a woman that’s hard — (even my Guardian Angel refused to watch over me when she heard).
I cannot tell you that I know the road.
Often I lose my way
and my life has been a painful crossing navigating reefs, in and out of storms, refusing to listen to the ghostly sirens
who invite me into the past,
neither compass nor binnacle to show me the way.
But I advance,
go forward holding to the hope
of some distant port
where you, my children — I’m sure — will pull in one day
after I’ve been lost at sea.~ Daisy Zamora ~
(Clean Slate, trans. by Margaret Randall and Elinor Randall)
