30 Days - Day 26

The crymobile.

I'm at the age where I don't give a tinker's whether you think I'm weird or pathetic or eccentric.

Crying was banned in the house I grew up in.

So I was left with a great groundswell of tears that couldn't be released until I ran away to Canada.

I've added to the great silo of them since, of course. And I'll try and not cry around you. I cry in bathrooms or in bed, but the greatest release comes when I drive alone like today. I was thinking of my mother, it being Mother's Day here, and I have a huge shuffle of music (oh, 6,000 pieces since you asked) on my Ipod in the car and who should start up but Roger Whittaker singing "Durham Town" which was the very last song my mother and I sang in harmony together a few months before she died.

My mother had a lovely voice. When she was in her forties, she re-ignited her passion for music and toured around with a small choir. I have to admit I wasn't 100% supportive of her endeavours as I had to babysit but I don't recall actually complaining to her as she was such a different person once she reconnected with her music. It was as if her younger self had come back. I'd play the piano for her when I got home from school and she'd practise her scales and teach me the joy of the madrigal style of singing - I later sang madrigals in Canada when I joined a choir.

All this came back to me today in the car - it never has before - and the tears that flowed were a mix of happy and so very sad. I truly felt her presence - I mean out of 6,000+ pieces of music, this was thrown up on a shuffle?

She had one piece of advice for me on my wedding day.

"Never forget your music, love."

And I haven't, though I shelved it for many, many years.

Best. Advice. Ever.

30 Days - Day 25

I glossed over a day. I never manage to sneak that by you so I'm confessing it up front.

It was Week 9 of the Writers' Workshops series yesterday and we are winding up what we think will be an anthology.

Life was pretty full during the week past, all good stuff, I've removed the word "busy" from my vocabulary, I have lost all rights to use it due to my serious overusage in my past lives.

I had a brainwave about writing an essay on finding this beautiful island and making the magic happen of moving here. And of course why I continue to stay here so I will work on that and maybe interview others like me who've Come From Away and now call Newfoundland home.

Now I'm off for a nap, with a hug and a kiss to the memory of my mother -pictured above with yours truly. Yeah, I had massive hair.

Etiquette - Blog and Otherwise.

I stopped responding to comments. Is this good blog etiquette? I don't know. Some of the blogs I love don't ever respond to their commenters. Some respond directly via personal emails while others are meticulous about responding to each and every comment. I was. But I find that mentally I've moved on from those past posts lately. I don't want to put my head back there, you know? Do you think that's rude?

A former fiancé died. I think I mentioned him before. A question about that too. I found his daughter had posted pics of him in the few months before his death. (I don't know her). Memory-shaking photos in showing his deterioration. And in my decluttering here I found some nice photos of him. His daughter, I would imagine, has no inkling of who I am. Would it be alright, d'you think, to send her on pics of her dad in the peak of his youth, his joie, his handsomeness from a former "friend". I don't know how else to classify myself.

My mother was a stickler for etiquette. She said it was all about respect. Everybody was more at ease when they knew the proper social rules. That way there would be no nasty surprises or ugly sounds or smells. One of her rules was you never arrived as a guest in a place with your arms the same length, even if it was just an apple or a facecloth or a bun to honour the host. I've passed this on to my daughters. I think of her this weekend as it is Canadian Mother's Day. I think of her every day of course but more so on anniversaries and days of significance.

Picture above is of me at 11 months, dying to launch myself off her lap and on to bigger things. She encouraged me in that and was so supportive of all my endeavours.

Thank you dearest Mum, your voice often echoes in my head.

Mother Stuff

My mother and me. When I was her only.

This mother-stuff is so very complicated for some.

I've often said, and kinda half meant: I wish I wasn't so complicated. I'm fairly intense at times. And I feel. Oh, boy do I super-feel. I've heard addicts feel things seven times more intensely than non-addicts. Hurts, slights, dismissals, wounds. I've nothing to compare to, right? So how would I know? All I know is I can feel demolishing pain at any kind of betrayal, whether real or imagined. It's all the same to me. So I talk to people who are just like me and who feel the same sense of hopelessness and sadness and loneliness now and again over, well, the mysteries of life.

Some days I can be over the moon, really happy. Next day, and for no earthly reason, I will wake up in the depths of despair. Analyzing doesn't help at all. Picking up the phone often does and gentle listening and soothing and often laughing at how ridiculous life is, can comfort like nothing else.

I'm guilty of loving my daughters to death and also another "daughter" who, at times, felt more close than my birth daughters. For we do the best we can with the love we have to offer.

But maybe it's not the kind of love that they want or need. I get that. And maybe they've given us all the love they're capable of and there's no more in the bucket or they've moved beyond needing a mother and thus sever all contact.

And that's the part I don't understand at all.

Every day I think of my own mother and how valuable and wonderful she was in all her humanity. She wasn't perfect, none of us are. But I miss her with such an intensity at times it takes my breath away. Her little phrases, her wit, her creativity, her positivity, her support of me, her only daughter for many years in a household of males.

So today, Daughter and I chat for long time. She was upset. Her daughter had broken a promise to take her for Mother's Day brunch. And I felt her pain deep in my heart. But we talked it through, we managed a few laughs over pictures she had posted on Facebook and the lovely things she'd said about me there.

And I focussed on this most precious connection with her.

And then I lit a pair of candles and incense for my two other mother-beloveds locked in my heart but never out of my mind.

Happy Mother's Day to all celebrating on this side of the world.

May your mother-stuff be the size of a lunchbag and not of a trunk.

Mother's Day Canada May 9th, 2010

Motherless

For all of us who cry alone
And blunder on, so brave.
Her voice a merest whisper
Echoing from the grave.

We wonder how we tough it out
Without her shining face
Many are times both glad and sad
She leaves an empty space.

We hear her voice at moments
From deep within, a laugh
We catch her carefree open smile
In a yellowed photograph.

Time doesn't have the answer
To this puzzling mystery
Though we are old and tired and worn
Still Motherless Children are we.

I wrote the above for those of us who don't have mothers to celebrate with on this special day and wish we did.