For my Jo

Lilac petals on newly turned soil
and the sun, speckled green
and lift up your head
and I lift it blueward
there is my face and I
countenance
taking your hand
and you look low
and your hand chills
and I want it whole
future, present, past
and you
are a little taller than my bosom
and I would like to
hold you to the sky
watch your curls dance
and hear that giggle
once more.

My Mom and the Cult of Motherhood.

Here's the thing: my Mom was a very good Mom.   She also had a very, very serious mental illness.  I know that there are lots of people for which this is simply not case.  It can sometimes be pretty vexing to have one's activities curtailed by another person's phobias, or to try and grow as a person in the company of someone whose illness makes them constantly narcissistic, or to handle the embarassment of being a teenager with a Mom that cannot conform to social norms.  These things are tough.  I get it.  It is also tough to be loved with a love that fiercely transcends rationality, but there are worse things.  Like not being loved at all.  And, that, not being loved, that was never something I faced. 

I get it now.  How much work it takes to make a hot breakfast every morning.  To have the patience to take a constantly chattering kid on long walks and adventures. To let your kids use your precious art supplies or to be patient as they are constantly ripping the pages out of writing notebooks  It takes time to make sure your kids feed the chickens and the goats.  Its hard to balance grace and discipline.

My Mom was very far from perfect and there are ways that she was incredibly selfish and cruel and unnecessarily jealous, but she cared for me in ways that now seem excellent and even exemplary.

The best thing about love is the way it blows away perfection.  It can blow away so many things. . .seemingly solid things... things proven to be dross really--the perfectly clean house or permed hair or dinner that looks like it came out of the Sunday circulars. Poof.  Blown away: reckoned with!  Perfect does not stand a chance next to love.  Effortless always looks shabby next to faithfulness...
Good always subverts the gloss.  When there is nothing else, then and only then, does it becomes perfectly clear that all we can really cling to is our very best--love, stronger than death.   

I haphazardly post something to this blog every now and then.  I mostly post mundane stuff with a side of theologicalizing.  I don't even know why.  I posted several very short reflections, around the time of my Mom's death, that might eventually become part of a spiritual memoir.   That seemed purpose-filled enough.  There are some reflections on scripture (also a short stint of purpose.)  But, mostly there are just a smattering of short, poorly written recounts of days spent well, or, as often as not, in a state of melancholia.  Now this post is not really an exercise in self-abnegation--like anyone who writes.... I would just like to know "why?"  Some people blog because they want to write a book, or because they want to keep family updated, or because they have some burning issue that they want to scour and discuss, dissect, and propagate.  This blog has really been none of these things.  More often than not, it has simply replaced the writing that I might have done in a journal or a diary--not as personal, but, not, not personal.  There it stands.  I think more than anything this writing seems to be an exercise not unlike Hansel and Gretal's trail of breadcrumbs.  Here it is.  Some meager memories.  Some sign that I was here, or there, or wondering through the woods.  Nothing substantial, but maybe, enough to find my way back now and again.

Yesterday, we went to Niagara Falls with cousin Danielle.  We took a ride on the  Maid of the Mist.  It was an unseasonably cold Mother's Day and we basically had the entire boat to ourselves.  It seems impossible that one can get so very close to the Falls.  It was raining and the mist was terrific and we could hardly keep our eyes open for the spray of the water.  I kept looking at these incredible turbulent waters, the Falls that look like a giant wave cresting before us, or an oncoming flood, or like standing in the middle of the Red Sea, or on the deck of the Ark.  It felt wild, sublime (in the Romantic era sense), and yet completely safe.  We stood on the steady little boat that had trudged out countless times to the edge of the Falls, we were coated in our blue slickers, even Sam laughed, we were secure. This was the most overwhelming thing that I had ever seen.  To stand here was too be very close to very basic force and life.  It made me think of death and on this Mother's day not surprisingly of my Mother's death.  It seemed okay then--dying--like it might, when you got real close, seem surprisingly okay.