Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon<\/p>\n
Already down to 33.\u00a0 Bound to head lower.\u00a0 Glad I covered all the tender plants.<\/p>\n
Mother’s day has little resonance for me.\u00a0 Mom has been dead now for almost 46 years, meaning she’s been dead as long as she was alive.\u00a0 I passed her 17 years ago.\u00a0 It feels strange to have lived into areas of life which my mother never experienced:\u00a0 near retirement age, grandkids, dealing with the inevitable losses of friends and loved ones other than your parents.<\/p>\n
It’s not that I didn’t love my mom.\u00a0 I did.\u00a0 It’s just that home faded away for me the year after she died.\u00a0 I went off to college, then got involved in the political radicalism of the 1960’s and became estranged from Dad.\u00a0 In essence that meant I became estranged from Alexandria, Indiana, too.\u00a0 I grew up there from age 1 and a half on, experiencing those magical years of pre-teen life when the world has not much larger compass than your street, your friends, your parents, but after age 18 I returned only very occasionally, for ten years, not at all.<\/p>\n
Of course, Mom was important in my life.\u00a0 She loved me and believed in me.\u00a0 She and my aunt Virginia nursed me back to health after a serious bout with polio.<\/p>\n
What we remember and what actually influenced us, of course, are not always (ever?) true to the lived experience, but they are true for our psychic life and I have a particular memory of Mom that was formative.\u00a0 One year a garden spider built a web over the window in our kitchen, the window next to the kitchen table where we ate breakfast.\u00a0 All spring and summer Mom and I watched that spider, watched her repair the web, spin up her prey, eat them.\u00a0 What I recall most from that was the sense of wonder, of awe that came off Mom in gentle waves.\u00a0 She also took insects outside in a kleenex and let them go.\u00a0 I do, too.<\/p>\n
I also remember times when she took to me an ice-cream parlor when I got straight A’s on my report card, which was all the time so I got a lot of ice cream, but more than that, I had the attention and time with Mom.\u00a0 I was close to her side of the family, the Keatons, growing up and have continued my close connection with them over the years.\u00a0 In part it was my way of staying connected to Mom, to her values and to the people and places that shaped her.<\/p>\n
But Mother’s Day?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 Doesn’t work for me.\u00a0 Too much Hallmark, too little real sentiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon Already down to 33.\u00a0 Bound to head lower.\u00a0 Glad I covered all the tender plants. Mother’s day has little resonance for me.\u00a0 Mom has been dead now for almost 46 years, meaning she’s been dead as long as she was alive.\u00a0 I passed her 17 years ago.\u00a0 It feels strange to … Continue reading Mom<\/span>