Tag: mother

Mother Always Said

 

UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_1e11Her mother always said, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”. Her mother heard this from her own mother as well and it became ingrained, so she, of course, passed it on to her children. But it stopped right there. She had a different view of this, she felt it was healthier to come to terms with your emotions and own your own thoughts and speak from the heart with compassion, but be honest.
She agreed with her mother, that spouting off negativity for no reason, or to harp on something unsettling from the past was a waste of energy. But she saw the value in being authentic and there was a time and a place to voice the ‘not nice’ stuff. It never was to be used to hurt another. She loved the practice of writing a letter and burning it, or email and trashing or deleting it. There was something very satisfying in speaking out the emotions in the heat of it all and breathing some deep cleansing breaths and then letting it all go. The Universe was her best friend and was always there with a kind shoulder to lean upon.
Another thing her mother always said was…”if you feel bad, get busy!” She resisted this one growing up. It seems like an avoidance of being present with your emotions, a running away from or stuffing of them which she thought was totally unhealthy.   After coming to a more enlightened view on the first point, she liked to wallow in her own emotions and get carried away by her own moods and run with her monkey mind on many a crazy trip.  Once she had gotten that, she then knew what her mother meant by simply getting busy. There was no reason to dwell in the past or get carried away on an emotional tangent that created drama and suffering. She saw how suffering was all self-inflicted and how it was all a matter of choice. You could choose exactly how you reacted to anything happening to or around you. Being busy was more just a sense of Being in her own flow and not getting sidetracked into crazy making – or what she would see as being a drama queen. She would rather stay in her center and keep moving forward or at least stay in a more bliss-filled state of being.
But the favorite thing that her mother always said was, “what a heavenly breeze” when the weather was just so. She liked this saying and found it stuck in her own repertoire of comments to use when she felt on top of the world. She made up her own unique sayings as well. She loved to exclaim “I’m a happy camper!” She had fond memories of her mother and wondered if her own daughter would feel the same way about her someday.

Our Puddle of Earth

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A rabbit kickboxing a crow on our puddle of earth…
making mud pies and cherry crisp out of that which grows
along the banks of the river.
We long to eat with the kings and queens of long-forgotten
castles and tip our hats to the pretty ladies as
they stroll by.
Where have they all gone? Fishing? Golden-eyed carp
and bottom dwellers, longing to know the truth,
the way, the stories that the ancestors passed down
generation to generation.
The crabapples fill the streets and the roll down
the hill when the wind blows.
The rains begin to pitter pat on the tin roof and
I long to hear your voice.
I long to journey down the same path that you walked.
Don’t touch it, its a bee. If it lands on you stand still,
don’t touch it.
Find a stick, act like a turtle, what noise does a turtle make?
The sun shines down thru the leaves as they cling
to the branches waiting for the last warm day…
turning colder and then to frozen ice as
it clings to them as a small child holds tight to
their mother’s leg.
The third coming of the blackberries…
racing with time, chasing faster than a roadrunner,
a jackrabbit, running to outwit the first frost.

It’s a game that we like to play.
Wondering how long the growing season can be stretched
before the frost falls on the pumpkins and turns everything
to mush.
It’s a long road, a dirt path, no creatures in sight that have
been domesticated for man-kinds evil ways.
Only wild animals, jackals, long-eared owls, coyotes
and Bob-bob-whites speak up.
They know that we are out of our element…
but they have learned to live and let live.
Something that we humans are just now starting to grasp.
We come together along this stretch of wild roses,
and winding roads, we learn about our heart
and how its connected to every creature.
We smile as the younger man on the bicycle passes this way.
Fall has come, we must find a hollowed out old tree
to snuggle up within…
or find where the bicycle is parked and
see if our heart has at last found its resting ground.
The jet-black dog pulls against his collar
and digs a hollow in the dirt to sleep for the chilly winters night.
Our puddle of earth brings us warmth,
a burning fire at our hearth
and a sense of Belonging to a greater good.