Heritage
The word for this week’s WordPress Challenge theme is Heritage. This “wall” in my home office/group room was created to balance the masculine energy in my house these days as I live with SIX MEN!
But it really represents my Heritage. I come from a long line of very creative and powerful women, specializing in survival. Most of them, through necessity or circumstance, were Single Mothers.
These lacy, pastel bits and pieces are from these women, as far back as one of Brigham Young’s many wives…all of whom were basically “single mothers”
I just can’t write about my mother(s) today. I will sometime. I know I need to.
And since I didn’t get a single card or call or flower and I even had to make my own coffee, I’m feeling pretty forlorn.
So I will write about myself.
I have been a mother since I was 5 years old. I knew how to change diapers and handle baby food and bottle basics before I started school. I mothered my little sisters (and I must have done a lousy job because they resent the hell out of me.)
Don’t get me wrong. I love mothering. I live for it. My favorite movie as a child was not some Disney Princess thing. Nope, for me it was “Cheaper by the Dozen”.
All I ever wanted was a huge family, a bunch of kids to mother!
I even mothered my mother, trying so hard to convince her life was worth living…but I failed…well, that’s how it felt to my broken teenage heart when she finally chose the permanent “check-out”.
I mothered, in the following order, myself, my sisters, my mother, my babysitting kids, my pets, my friends, my foster sisters, my boyfriends, my fellow students, my co-workers, my husbands, my neighbors, my BUGS, broken birds, and my hundreds of my clients…this last is a whole separate story of amazing “motherhood”.
I mothered myself when my own mother escaped her pain by shooting herself. How oxymoronic is that?
And I had to make the excruciating decision to NOT mother the child I was carrying at the time my mother died, leaving my sisters in my real charge this time.
Blissfully, I finally got to mother my son Michael, the light of my life, and eventually, a pile of step-children. And now, though I am their grandmother, I even get to mother my grandsons a little bit.
It’s still my favorite thing to do.
So here is my choice for Song Lyric Sunday, today, Mother’s Day, 2017. It’s the song I used to play for my most injured and damaged clients, in the hope that somehow, a little mother’s love really can heal. I know it has healed me.
And I know my “daughter” Pamela has received exactly this from her Mother.
And just so I don’t end on a pitiful note,
I’m off to Mother my CATS!!! They won’t know what hit them!
I have none. I am so content to “bloom where I am planted”, a lesson learned early from my father. It has served me so well throughout my life…I am never bored and there is never nothing to see or do wherever I am!
I say that, but also have to confess, I “live” in several different places: a suburb of Seattle, in the mountains outside Spokane, in the San Juan Islands, San Diego, and in my car…no, not that way, but I do love a road trip with car-camping involved.
Even in my own 100 year old house (which people call a maze due to all the weird rooms and additions over the years), I get the bug to travel, to “live” in other parts of it. After 43 years here, I have lived in every square inch of it. There are 5 or 6 bedrooms (depending on how you define the space), 2 or 3 living rooms (again depending), 3 bathrooms, laundry room, 2 and 1/2 kitchens, a large bonus room, a huge deck, a patio with table and chairs for outside dining, Oh, and a fruit tree orchard! (apples, cherries, pears, and plums!)
Back to Wanderlust, I have been recently bit by the Road Trip bug. In August of this year we will travel down the West coast, then across the Southern States until we reach Mississippi. I lived there with family for a few years when I was younger and James grew up there. We met in high school in Natchez.
It’s time for a “Roots” trip so we are taking my son and grandsons on a road trip adventure, to Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. We’ll travel in style for most of it in a spectacular RV. And we will get to see wonderful friends and relatives we never get to hang out with, including a wonderful new Blogging Friend!
The slideshow is of some of the places in Mississippi I want to share with my grandsons!
Cold, late night so long ago
When I was not so strong you know
A pretty man came to me
Never seen eyes so blue
You know, I could not run away it seemed
We’d seen each other in a dream
Seemed like he knew me, he looked right through me, yeah
“Come on home, girl” he said with a smile
“you don’t have to love me yet, let’s get high awhile
But try to understand, try to understand
Try, try, try to understand, I’m a magic man”
Winter nights we sang in tune
Played inside the months of moon
“Never think of never, let this spell last forever”
Well, summer lover passed to fall
Tried to realize it all
Mama says she’s worried..growing up in a hurry
“Come on home, girl” Mama cried on the phone
“Too soon to lose my baby yet, my girl should be at home”
But try to understand, try to understand
Try, try, try to understand, he’s a magic man, Mama, ah, he’s a magic man
“Come on home, girl” he said with a smile
“I cast my spell of love on you, a woman from a child”
But try to understand, try to understand
Oh, oh, try, try to understand
Try, try, try to understand
He’s a magic man, oh, he’s got the magic hands
OoooOooo’s over top
“Come on home, girl” he said with a smile
“You don’t have to love me yet, let’s get high awhile”
But try to understand, try to understand
Try, try, try to understand, he’s a magic man, yeah, oh
Helen from https://helenespinosa.wordpress.com/ has asked for some “hopeful” music from the 80’s. I’m not sure my selections are what she had in mind. Because my very first thought was Joan Baez and her song (and album) Children of the 80’s, all I could think of after that was all the great political and protest music that came out in the tail end of that Disco-laden era.
Actually, now that I think of it, there really isn’t anything much more hopeful than younger generations filling our hearts, minds and EARS with thoughtful and inspirational music, even if it is protesting the current state of affairs!
In the 1980’s, I attended Antioch University to finish my Masters. We were encouraged to be creative in how we learned about our chosen subjects. I took a class I expected to be dry and factual, called One World-the History of Political Science. I hated both history and politics. My professor could see how much I dreaded this class and suggested that I create an informative project about “politics” as I personally defined it. I designed an auditory presentation called Music of the 60’s vs Music of the 80’s. Going in, I had assumed the music from MY time of Flower Children, Hippies and Protesters would insultingly overshadow the inane stuff I was hearing on the radio in my house. My son would have been a young teenager then. Rupert Holmes singing about Pina Coladas, Captain and Tenille, Bananarama, Come ON!
Man, was I ever shocked when I started actually researching current music. I talked to local band members like Heart, Queensryche, and Soundgarden. And all the folk singers I could find-Riley and Maloney, Tom Dundee, Jim Post. I started really listening to the non-mainstream (the tail end of disco and it’s spinoffs) type music. I interviewed disc jockeys from several local radio stations.
What I ended up with, almost accidentally, was a 90 minute tape that blew my professor’s mind. He lobbied for, and won me 10 credits for my 3 credit class.
Here are just a handful of songs I had in my project.
If you want to hear more great 80’s Protest or political songs, check out this great site.
Thanks to Helen, and all the participants in her challenge, who make my musical week!
A Good News/Bad News PS
That tape got destroyed in a basement flood not long afterward. I was SO crushed!!
BUT, my son Michael informs me that the music I was so judgmental of was not at all to his liking either, just happened to be on the radio. We now enjoy mostly the same stuff.
In the bottom photo we are probably listening to Depeche Mode…
