Song Of My Mother

My mother's songs in my head are soft melodies for the rest of my life. In the year she has been gone, I hear rising crescendo notes of a future she prepared for me. A few months ago, I watched the sunset mirroring our physical life together as I sat on the beach. Paradoxically, I smiled, tearing up, thinking it took her absence for me to recognize what she always said was my purpose......the innate ability to heal with my words my presence. In the past year, I found the food to feed those hungry for light in the darkness of my grief. I vow to provide soothing sounds when there seems to be nothing except the distorted loudness in worldwide crises. I wish to always be a gift to my child, to be that element of her life that never misses a beat so that she too will celebrate her motherhood every damn day as I did with my mother.

I firmly believe it is my responsibility to not only give Angela a version of her grandmother's stimulating song when she questions her judgment, her abilities, her choices. I wish only to have in her head, in her heart, a melody that encourages her to live life wanting to dance.