My mom with me in California
First Horse Ride
I love this picture. It’s a shame that I don’t remember this day. The only way I know for sure that both events happened on the same day, is by our outfits. My mom swears she doesn’t remember anything special about that totally awesome day. She showed me what was real and what was magic, one right after the other. If only I knew which one I saw first. You can see by my face which one I loved. What was it? The music and the colors? The golden ring?
I am an artist, I am a mom… is how I began my bio. My artistic side defines the kind of mother that I am, but mostly I am the kind of mother that I am because of my mother.
Being a mom is entwined in everything that I do. I know this because recently I found myself in the unsettling proximity of two motherless children, and I admit, I was distracted. My mind wandered to the kids and to the mom out of reach. It pulled at my mother heart. Then, the phone rang and my sister told me a fantastic cow mother story about a calf imprinting on her. Then there was the day that a duckling waddled into the backyard cheeping in distress. A very tiny duckling appeared out of nowhere with no family in sight or earshot of his constant cheeping. We tried to hide him from the neighbor cat who had just killed a bird that morning and who scratched me good to go after whatever was lurking in the blackberry bushes. Hopefully it wasn’t the duck family. My grown children still need their mom. If there are supermom powers give me cryptonite or maybe “Dong Qui”, which my daughter used to call, “Don’t Cry” mommy tea. What if when I do not have my own mother anymore I become an over-mother, an uber-mother, a “smother” to my children? No, I will simply be their mother and I will be the memory of their grandmother because that is what women do, whatever needs to be done. Above all we must instill in all children the belief that there is magic all around them, every day.
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
– Roald Dahl