Posted in Fragile Life, Legacy, My own childhood

Pregnancy & Grief

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

I often think of my 20-year-old mother today.
Irish Catholic.
Exactly 8 & 1/2 months pregnant.

Her President, the age of her father-in-law, shot dead, beside his wife, on a Texas street.
My mother was 17, the age of my son, when she went door to door with her younger sister.

“The Kelly girls,” the neighbors called them.
Their mother sent them out to campaign.

I think of the unbearable grief that I felt on 9/11 & 11/9 and on the December day when children were shot inside their first-grade classroom, and I wonder that today is not my birthday.

And I wonder, what my young mother felt in those last two weeks with me inside.

And I wonder if the sweet sensitivity of my own son is due to the grief I held as he came into the world and she left it.

Posted in Fragile Life, Mid-Life Mama, Mother to Crone, Round Two, Teens, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

school bus

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

although only “minutes” have passed since i immersed myself in the work of the day… i hear the school bus go by, again. and though no child of mine is upon it, i still find myself marking time as it comes and goes, as my youngest prepares to fly the nest, and the beginning and ending of day are almost touching.

Posted in Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, Mother to Crone

40 Years as Mother

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

1 month remains between me & the Motherhood Archetype on this 365 Day Journey toward Menopause.

As a gesture of release & acknowledgement, I empty my drawers of tampons (while still keeping some in my purse)–certified organic, chlorine-dye-synthetic-plastic-additive-free, 100% cotton–noticing how foreign they’ve become in my hand after 11 months without employment.

I began this journey of The Mother with my first bleed–at exactly 13 and a half (like my mother before me and my sister after me)–and in the absence of a u-turn on the immediate horizon, I’ll finish this journey at age 53.

Thanksgiving Day.

Forty & a half years later.

(October 23, 2017.)