HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY: Have You Heard About the Bear?

To me, mothers share a lot in common with farmers.

Like farmers, they toil every day.

They sow seeds without a promise of a sure harvest.

Under the most harsh conditions, they till the soil, pull weeds, and prune where they believe it is needed.


With no promise of a certain return or a good harvest for all their labor, they work on.

What did my own mother often tell me?

"Mothers hold their children's hands for only a short time -- but their hearts forever."

Mother once told me that the folly of most two-leggeds was that they wanted "happy endings"

when the best one could hope for was the appreciating of the happy moments

in between the dawning of the light and the dying of it.

"Can't we have both, Mama?" I remember asking, coughing from double pneumonia.

She ruffled my hair and smiled sadly, "Perhaps you will be the exception, Little One. I will pray so."

My THE BEAR WITH 2 SHADOWS grew from the childhood tales told me by Mother

 while she hugged me as I shivered and coughed from double pneumonia.

We were iced in our basement apartment in Detroit by one of the worst ice storms in remembrance.

Phones down. Just new in town. All alone.

So Mother merged bits of myth and legend she remembered from both sides of her bloodline: Lakota and Celtic.

She was sure I would die,

and she wanted my last moments to be filled, not with fear and dread,

but with awe, wonder, and magic.

She told of The Turquoise Woman, whose touch was icy but whose heart was warm. My shivers were from her embrace.

And that hulking shadow at the foot of my bed?

Why, that was Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, protector of all hurting children.

With fever-dimmed eyes, I swore that I saw Hibbs.  I smiled despite my coughing and fear. Hibbs was there for me.  Me. 

I wasn't alone.

And a world of wonder and magic opened up in my feverish mind, birthing a happy moment for my mother:

despite the odds, I grew better. I lived.

Have you heard about the bear?

He saved a little boy once. A bit of that little boy still lives ... in my heart.

So you know how I feel about my mother who has gone to that Land That Knows No Shadow. 

I wear her love like a ghost of a rose.

But many mothers seem to labor in obscurity.
And for all their efforts, their loving kindnesses, their reluctant punishments --

they tend to slowly fade into the shadows, hidden from the spotlight of their children's ever-growing focus upon themselves, their wants, their lives.

Mothers often grow ghost-like even in the eyes of their husbands, chained to the demands of job, bills, and a vitality that is frighteningly leaving them.

For all you mothers out there who feel they are slowly becoming invisible, unappreciated, and alone,

Here is a video I borrowed from Kimberly Job's lovely blog, SCRIBBLED SCRAPS : http://scribbledscraps.blogspot.com/

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