"Wise as a serpent but gentle as a dove",
Was scripture you'd quote to me many a time,
And though your Faith would sustain you,
Through many dark storms,
You refused to insist
That it should be mine.
You see, I had every chance to fall out of line,
A multitude of options, to shy or to shine,
And even though I may not have said it a lot-
I remembered your words,
And made some of them mine.
So, when I reached the age,
That you were back then,
When you felt like you'd failed me,
And said so again,
I'm taking your hand now,
To place it in mine.
I'm smiling but, sighing,
I'm drawing the line.
No one's written the book yet, Mom,
You did just fine.
My mother passed away this past week and I'm still processing the impact. As recently as this year, she sometimes expressed concern that she wasn't a good enough mother. I would remind her of how much she accomplished to raise me on her own and hope that she would take it to heart; to truly know that, like I write here, she did a fine job and that I'm grateful to have had such a fighter for a mother.
We didn't speak frequently, but a good and real bond was still there and I find myself shaken in the magnitude, now, the full spectrum of surprisingly monolithic emotions that arise and present themselves as if they hadn't been there all along.
