Almost every day, my mother says to me -
The state of this world has made her feel sick.
The grief is in her stomach and her heart.
This woman who was raised in The Great Depression, saving,
scrimping, making fun out of the smallest things, like music and books and drawing.
This woman who loved to study in school, learned to play the piano and read music, majored in Latin and Greek at Boston University.
This woman who married a handsome and dynamic young minister when she was only twenty-two, and bore two bright-eyed children before she left him after seven years - to protect herself and her children.
This woman who got her own job as an editor, as the late fifties ended, and civil rights became front page news. A woman who lived through the horrors of the murder of Emmet Till, the assinations of the Rev. Marten Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and JFK.
This woman who loved to sing in choral groups, joined the Arlington Street Church, met my father and married him in 1962, worked for with ERA and senior citizens - became a mother again, two more times, then went abroad with her four children and husband to live in the gentle embrace of The Netherlands for two years.
This woman who came back to America with a new perspective, earth mama, grinding up the soil to grow food, canning and perserving, learning to love horticulture enough to study at Radcliff College, emerging with a certificate in Landscape Design.
Years of volunteer work, without missing a hot meal every single night for her family. Recycling before it was hip, cautious of waste, because she was a "child of the Depression."
This woman, who has now lived beautifully and with goodness for seventy five years, has pain in her heart for the children of Bagdad, the families with no water, no food, no money, no future. She is sickend by the US President.
Almost every day, my mother says to me -
The state of this world has made her feel sick.
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| September 28, 2007 |
