This picture was taken in the house where I lived on Nourse Road in Bolton, MA from the time I was born until I turned 10 years old. I'm not sure how old I was in it. My sister was born when I was less than two years old, but she wasn't here then, I'm not even sure if she's a twinkle in my mother's eye yet.
My mother sang to me when I was young. She bought me pretty clothes from DR in Harvard Square and Marimekko, but I preferred the overalls from Sears & Roebuck. She introduced me to classical, blues, and jazz music. She let me run wild in nature. When she remarried, she threw musical instruments and books at all six of us children and felt lucky when something stuck. It all seeped in overt time and we reference it now. We sang together as a family and made up musical shows. She encouraged creativity. She took writing courses at Harvard Extension and yet she never finished her degree. Her writing was good, yet she was so busy helping 6 kids and a difficult husband, who wanted to be published and yet was unethical, that she had little time to call her own.
She took us to museums, art shows, plays, concerts of all varieties, to churches and temples, to the sea shore when a hurricane was coming and outside to eat dinner as many nights as she could get away with it.
She loves to be outside, in the light and air and she has a hard time sitting still. We share that. We also have, as my 2nd step-father describes it, "no filters". We take in everything. The words people say, the words they chose not to say, the bits of materials scattered on a sidewalk, the texture of paint, the emotions coming from people while they appear silently before us. It can be overwhelming, and that has contributed to both of us helping others to be productive, before we've allowed ourselves to be productive.
She is a sculptor, but if you call her that she'll get angry. Just like she apologizes when she's about to serve you a great meal...she'll tell you if you really like it, that she can't repeat it, as she never makes anything the same way twice. So if you like it, it's a happy accident ~ she can't take credit. This is starting to change and we're all starting to ask her exactly how she's made things so that she, and by extension we, may make it again.
She could have been a poet or an interior designer. She has a great eye and ear. She's helped us all refine ours and we're indebted to her more than she'll ever accept. She's also a great listener when you really need that. She's taught all of us about compassion and kindness, too. She only lashes out when she is deeply hurt or angry from feeling disrespected. She is the middle child, between two brothers, and didn't feel valued in her youth. I'm not sure she feels completely valued now, although I'm so glad she's with my second step-father who adores and gets her. They've known each other since I was 8 or so, but have been together since I was 25 or so. They wake up to take pictures of the moon, time tides to go to the beach at just the right walking hours, make verbal, visual and physical jokes together as they "night crawl" through the house...
I look just like her in negative. My dad had a dark room and printed some negative of me in reverse and showed me old photographs he still had of her : twins. Physically were are very much the same. Emotionally we are very much the same. Except I love to put my face in and under the water and she doesn't. I love to seek adventure and so does she, although she hasn't made it a priority. She had drama in her youth, early marriages and with so many kids. That drama gobbled up lots of energy that could have been used on art or adventure. She sewed the seeds in me, but didn't nurture them fully in herself. I'm hoping she'll continue to sculpt and scribble for a very long time.
Her art so far has been our family and the homes she's created for us. You see her third husband, my second step-father also had six children when they got married. Together they oversee 12 adult children, all of the grandchildren and we were all reeling these last years after my sister's (I refuse to call her my step-sister, as she was a chosen sister from the time I was 8, through her becoming a married sister, until the cancer struck) death from appendix cancer. It comes in waves and they're getting smaller, but she's always with us. My mother continues to be close to my second stepfather's children, too. The ones who have been in my life since I was 7, and who I also call brothers and sisters (in fact I do the same thing with my stepmother's boys, as I've known them since I was born).
Her gift is to somehow love all of us and make us each feel it unconditionally. To be one of 14 children and to feel love from all my sets of parents and siblings is miraculous. I attribute that to my Mom. She has modeled love, compassion and over coming emotional hurdles with kindness. It wasn't easy and at times it was overwhelming, to the point of exhausting (for all of us), but it remains a gift. One I'm now trying to model and pass along to my kids as well.
Today Frank, Mom and I went to babysit some goats. Yes, Goats! Kids, if you prefer, and it's the most relaxed and happy I've seen here since winter ended! She warmed up the bottle, fed the smallest kid and we watch them all play to the point of exhaustion while we three humans watched from inside the pen. It was a grand way to spend Mother's Day Eve with her.....
Good Night, Mothers and Children of Mothers, G'night!
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