Posted in Holidays, Quotes 2 Inspire

Mothers Day Proclamation 1870

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

This original Mothers Day Proclamation from 1870 in Boston is particularly poignant for mothers of sons.

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

by Julia Ward Howe

Posted in Holidays, Quotes 2 Inspire

The Lanyard

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

From former poet laureate of the United State, Billy Collins.

Hands down, the best Mothers Day poem ever. (Hold on to your tissues!)


“The Lanyard”

“The Lanyard”

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past —
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift–not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Billy Collins

Posted in Fragile Life, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments

The Rocking of the Seasons

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

Whenever I moan about the insanity of a Vermont spring–from 60 to snowing in a week–my sister Stephanie reminds me, “It’s the rocking of the seasons.”

Cassatt/detail (visipix.com)

…Which means, that we’re in a middle place–a place of transition–of this–and of that; that we are, in fact, being rocked into the change this new season will bring, just as a mother rocks a fussy child.

It’s the same place that I find myself with my younger son.  At one moment, he snuggles up on the couch against my breast and at another, he drops my hand when someone passes us on the street.

At night, he longs to sleep beside me, and by day, he longs to gallivant with friends.

He boasts of strength and skill and success and then tucks a tiny stuffed puppy into his pocket–and bids me tend to the other stuffed friends while he’s at school.

He leaves me elaborate feeding plans for his penguins while he learns division and builds forts and experiments with loyalty.

I know that this is the rocking of a new season for him–and me. I have an older son so I remember the tumult.

This the beginning of the end.

Soon there will be no cuddling, no hand holding, no requests to crawl into my bed. Soon, his need for friends and accomplishment and triumph will trump any desire for me.

I can’t complain. I fully embraced each of my sons early years with nursing and co-sleeping.

Sorolla/detail (visipix.com)

I let go of my career and my identity to stay home with them.  I lost all sense of self while I followed their paths to make certain that the road beneath them was gentle and kind.

I am as eager to fly this nest as they are.  And yet, not without pangs of separation.

My friend Gail once shared something in a circle of women that I have never forgotten:
What has to die so that something can live?

There are so many deaths in mothering, beginning at the beginning, and arriving every day after. But equally matched with these deaths are the blessings of new life–new growth–new possibility.

If I could make one mothering goodbye wish about my boys, it would be this~that I could capture an hour with them at each stage of our time together–from infancy, to toddlering, to the precious preschool years and the expanding elementary days, to the tender turbulence of the teen.

But there’s no going back.  There’s only each moment as it “presents” itself…along this rocking way.

(And how about you? Into what changes are you rocking?)