The Two of Us

I AM THE ARCHETYPAL MOTHER

There is a frightened little girl in me
who fights the good fight every minute
every day and cries herself to sleep
and I don’t comfort her enough,
but now I’m longing to enfold her;
so we sit and rock, the two of us,
and, oh, what simple strength
there is in that, and bliss.
And as I wrap my arms
around the child, it seems
as if the whole big wild chaotic
universe is sitting on my lap
surrounded by and drenched in
love. I am the archetypal mother,
crooning, soothing, weeping for
my children’s pain. But the Creator
takes my tears, as all are gathered
for a baptism of rain, sweet, tender,
healing rain that makes the iris
and the poppy and the peach tree
bloom in spring. So when we cry,
the child and I, our grief is not
in vain. Our sighing is a gentle wind,
and when we laugh the leaves dance
on the trees again.

by Mary Campbell, 2008

Mothers and Daughters

Missouri River in flood, June 4, 2011, NASA Earth Observatory photo on OurAmazingPlanet.com

A MOTHER’S WATERSHED

Motherhood’s the wide, green river curving through the heart,

beginning to beginning, watering the tilted plain and surging

through my veins, emerging now and then, mysteriously salinized.

It burns the skin; the eyes turn into lakes, emitting rivulets that
carry off the residue of transitory misery or happiness,
neglected joy, and bittersweet remembrance.

At too great a distance from her watershed I am bereft, without a

home or compass. Safe beside her, I am known and cherished,

strong and capable, refreshed, refreshing, blessed, eternal. Just

tonight she has reminded me that it is time to fill the bottles from

her wells. That must be why I am so thirsty. I’d forgotten: There's
no virtue in the kind of sacrifice that weakens me. I, too, am

mother of a hundred streams. Depleted, how can I be generous?

Everything I plant in gardens on her slopes and in her valleys

flourishes, oblivious to drought and flood, in sun or shade. Her

spirit thrives in maple trees and terraces of pungent herbs, in

groves of lilac, vines of wild rose. Hers is a subtle presence,

growing lush just as the summer wanes, in towers of

chrysanthemums, in harvesting of apples, pears, and plums.

Because of her protection, by her foresight, in her love and grace—

thus am I snug all winter long. She has put up enough for

sustenance and liberality, for fellowship and charity. Don’t worry, I

can hear her murmur. God is good, there are provisions in the

cellar, and abundant game runs in the wood.

There is neither benefit nor leisure for indulging in the shame of

having taken her for granted, nor should I blame myself for

offering a song or fragrance not the same as hers, for of necessity

our courses separated long before (I thought) they ought to have.

Unable to go back, impelled by currents I had no control of, I have

faced implacably great cliffs of stone. Had I not known she waited

on the other side, I might have stayed and gathered to myself the

streams that chance and gravity had given me. I could have settled

like a placid lake in such a Canaan, if it were indeed the Promised

Land and it had been my destiny to populate that fertile valley. But

the bottom would not hold; I must go on or be absorbed, and I

was born to sing and on the strength of just one chorus, honed to

honesty, could slice through bedrock, if need be, to force my way

beyond the granite gates and flow again beside my source.

And I had generations to propel to greatness of their own in time,

not mine to choose, thank God for that; thank Heaven that I finally

knew how many rocks I need not move. The hurdles would make

way for me or not, regardless of how hard I pushed, without

respect to karma or the stories I’d created, saying, Stumbling

blocks, remove yourselves and go impede somebody else. As it

turned out, they were as porous as the sand. I simply drifted

through, emerging purer than before. I left behind (for compost)

death and other sediment. What better could I do but flow in ease

and lightness toward the source, to motherhood herself? Why

should I race to reach a destination foreordained in any case,
when there is peace along the way?

Fort Peck Dam on the upper Missouri River in eastern Montana
(Source: groucho-karl-marx.blogspot.com)

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Moms in Hell

Mom collected and sold 18th-century American antiques. She would have loved this 1868 Winslow Homer,
Artists Sketching in the White Mountains

MOVING PICTURE



I once had in my home
a Hoosier Cupboard much like this

 God, I thank you for the mom you lent me to, and for
too short a time it sometimes seems... much more I
could have learned from her about serenity, I find,
now that I know what she went through. Well. What
an education from my infancy, to see her resurrected
from her private hell, and learn to celebrate her triumph.

Oh, I hated her and spurned her hugs and turned to
Dad for love instead. I only knew that she had left
and when she stayed she drank too much and stank
of wine and cigarettes and that the house was always
an embarrassment (I’d yet to learn that life itself is
messy). Well — except my siblings’ rooms and
Daddy’s dresser — little islands gleaming in their
tidiness amid the chaos that my mother left for Alma
to bring order out of, goddess that she was, on
Tuesdays, nine to five, and Friday afternoons.

Dear God, I praise you for this mother and the love
she kept in escrow for me when I came of age, and
that I did so while she lived; I thank you that we
had those blissful years of friendship. When I carried
Marian, I asked her, I remember, “What if I don’t love
my baby?” (I was, after all, the youngest. What could
I know of an infant’s sweet compelling winsomeness?
I’d been unlovable enough myself, unkind, to punish
her, as if she didn't have her share and more of
torment.) Well, she said. I promise, you would walk
through fire — no, you would run through hell to save
your child. And so I have, for all of them. And so I
would again. A mother suffers every pang her children

feel, and doubly, till she learns surrender.





Mom had a corner pie cupboard filled with this type of pottery, called "flow blue,"
which originated in 18th-century Staffordshire, England



Father-Mother, thank you for the scent of Shalimar that

sometimes drifts by... through the window... from the

sky. And thank you for the memories, which are not

fixed like pictures in a book; they are alive, as she is,

very near, I often sense. Well. I can see her now, the

way she’d sit, one leg tucked under her, in tennies on

her favorite chair, and how I wish I hadn’t sold it

years ago to pay the rent. She would have told me to,



Mom's chair, or close enough. This one is from
the website http://www.efi-costarica.com/. It's a
late-19th-century Eastlake; Mom's was
upholstered in dark blue veltet

 however. No regrets, then. Now she sits on air.


Creator, thank you for my funny mom, who would
have looked around, as I do now, at papers, manuscripts, and
laundry, at the baskets full of unrelated stuff and sundries,
at the dishes, pots, and pans; and she would not have been
dismayed. Well. She had Dad, I have three cats. I
can’t say Dad was much more help than they are, not

indoors, at any rate, although he kept the bills paid,

did the yard, and loved us all inordinately, as fathers

must. He didn’t dust, however, nor did Mom, except

for company, and that, once I had learned how wise

she was, how rare and good, was fine with me.