Mother’s Day, 2012.

 Some reflections on the mother’s who have left us, because a dear friend just this week lost her dear mother.  Mother, the strength, the reliance, the sure thing in your life.  You know that it will happen, whether it is quickly, as my own mother left, or lingering, as my friend’s, it happens, it happens too soon, no matter how long you had her, and suddenly that one person you could count on to always be there when you stubbed your toe or broke your heart or just wanted to share a smile, suddenly they are no longer here with you.  Suddenly you’re on your own.  You’re the one giving advice, you’re the one comforting the boo-boo’s, being strong, doing that for your youngers – and for yourself.  It’s been 15 years, and I still think ‘oh, I have to tell my mother that’.  She’s come around to tell me things when I needed to be told.  I am a firm believer in the fact that things happen that there is no ‘scientific’ explanation for.  So, I know it was my mother on a morning in New York City just a couple of weeks after she was gone, when I was having tea and a bagel in Central Park and a chickadee flew into a bush next to me.  I knew she’d want to know how auditions went, so I told her about the people we saw.  Or the morning at Camp Katrina, when I was having my own private little snit fit and a hummingbird flew up right next to me and stayed long enough to tell me to get over it.   Or the evidence we found of a fire that might have destroyed the house she build in Indian Lake; the fire never grew to do that, but there’d been the start of one that got put out even though no one was there to do it.  Or the times I’ve had a thought an insight, a feeling that came from nowhere-well, it came from somewhere, or someone.  I’d like to be more like my mother was, but there’s too much of my father in me for that.   So, Mommy, Grammy, my Mother, today especially, but every day even if I don’t do it out loud, I honor you for everything you did to make me who I am.  I didn’t say it enough when you were here, we never do, but I love you and hope some day to get to tell you that again.