The womb-filled sea to earth...

I love you mom.

Mom and I in Malibu | Shot by dad just after arriving in America | circa 1963

My third year on Substack sharing this Mother’s Day post…

this year from smalltown Oregon where my brother helped me pull off the best surprise.

Mom will be 89 this summer.

---

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, step-moms, adoptive moms, moms-to-be, grieving moms, estranged moms, those with their moms and missing their moms. I wish you peace and love today and every day. I see you and I love you. oxoxox

Dear Mom,

Thank you for the love, care and support you have poured so selflessly.

Thank you for showing me what it means to hope in a storm.

Thank you for demonstrating the art of forgiving and resilience.

Thank you for teaching me to mind my manners.

Thank you for your daily prayers and phone calls.

Thank you for never-ending encouragement.

Thank you for feeding us. Always.

Thank you for the laughter. It’s the best.

Thank you for writing your story.

There is no one in the world like you.

I am truly blessed to call you mom.

I love you to infinity and beyond (you can’t beat me :)

Happy Mother’s Day,

love, deb ox

---

This is a poem my youngest son, Ian, sent me that really touched my heart. It was my dream to have one of my babies laid on my chest immediately after birth. The first baby was traumatic, blue from the cord crushing between neck and shoulder. The next two babies were swept away the same for other reasons. And I was born at home on my mother's bed after hours of trauma, with a midwife (who arrived by bike) — who finally desperately hunted down a doctor. Reminiscent of the BBC show “Call the Midwife.”

Shearwater. I love this so, so very much. Get tissues. ox

Shearwater
BY RACHEL RICHARDSON
You were given feet but had never touched
them to earth. You were given the sea
and you fed upon it for months.
 
So when your head crowned, ashen
with loss of blood from the cord
wound tight around your neck,
 
and when they cut you from me,
and you were silent, and the tide in me
receded, I remembered the shearwaters
 
following the ship—the slow sweep
of them riding the wind’s current.
The stretch of them, hovering,
 
cruciform, shearing the air the way an envelope
slides back into a box of letters, making
its narrow space. I had watched
 
from the stern for hours their trailing:
as if stillness itself drifted toward me.
I thought it was my life.
 
Then someone lifted you up,
and there was a sound,
and they laid you on me, breathing...

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

- C. S. Lewis