My fondest Mom memories are of her fluttering around our kitchen cooking in her pajamas. On Thanksgiving, she wakes at the crack of dawn to cook a feast that is born out of love and hours standing over boiling pots. Her work is both methodical and chaotic. It’s easy to think the rice and beans, turkey, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, curry goat, green bean casserole, and salmon popped onto the dining room table in a flurry of magic created by tiny elves, birds and friendly woodland creatures.
My mother, however, makes sure to let us know this is NOT what happens.
Thank you mom for the love and scrumptious meals.
I wish a happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, grandmothers, guardians and mother figures out there!
Quote of the Day
“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.”
—Maya Angelou
Poem of the Day
Rock Me to Sleep
By Elizabeth Akers Allen, 1832 – 1911
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,—
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay,—
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap;—
Rock me to sleep, mother — rock me to sleep!
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!
Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,—
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!
Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead tonight,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!
Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last listened your lullaby song:
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother, — rock me to sleep!
Song of the Day
stacy benedict 
One thought on “All I am I owe to my mother”