I published this essay, or this was a part of an essay, I published in my ezine, Daily Passion Activator. The part I didn’t mention there is that Mom has Parkinson’s disease. She is doing well and is always telling me “I have no restrictions!” which I think she is telling herself more than me. Anyway – here is what came from my fingers to the keyboard today.

It is a usual rather unusual event in my life.
I ponder something while I am snug inside
my house. I walk to my car, I get in and
start the car moving and the tears flow.

This morning I was thinking about the
visit with my mother yesterday. Katherine,
Emma and I watched TV with her after
a yummy meal of chili and corn muffins
which I provided, hearty fare for a very
chilly Bakersfield night.

We didn’t do anything monumental, we
simply spent time with one another, side
by side, conversing in bits and pieces and
chunks. We watched “Ugly Betty,” something
I don’t watch very often. I got so relaxed I
wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep my
eyes open until ER was on, a Thursday
night ritual for me – a “Must See” in this,
the final season.

My girls and I stepped into the night. I was
almost out of hearing range when I heard,
“Goodnight, my baby, I love you.” It was
so faint I wasn’t sure if I heard it.

I so wanted to hear it.

I called back, much more loudly, “Sweet
dreams, Mom!”

This morning, the echo of Mom’s voice played
in my ears. “Goodnight, my baby, I love you.”
In the light of dawn, the words sounded
like a prayer.

The words, I realize, the message, is a prayer.

I drove Emma to school and cried. I tried to
hold the tears in my throat and I heard an odd
high-pitched almost-wail come from inside me.
Emma gets upset by my tears, so I wanted to
keep them from her. They sounded almost like
that baby inside me, that baby my mother
obviously remembers.

The other pondering that continued to play
in my mind-and-heart was a morning pages
snippet from several days ago, again related
to my parents, brothers and sister. I was busily
compiling essays to put into a Chapbook
Christmas Gift for my siblings, a way, I
thought, of helping them come to know ]
this woman I am.

I oftentimes feel alienated from my siblings,
left out from the rest of them. I am getting
better at not letting it bother me – and part
of that is instead of hiding who I am from
them, I am just being who I am and celebrating
who I am in front of them – although I
am not in front of them very often.

In my morning pages I wrote, as if
speaking to my brothers and sister:

This is me.
You don’t have to like me.
It is unnecessary at best. Cool if
You did, but wholly and
holy unnecessary.

We long to be known as who we are and
even more so, I discovered as I drove Emma
to school this morning, we long for people
to know who we are and to love us unabashedly
either because of who we are or in
spite of who we are.

When we are babies, people love us as these
lumpy, drooling, noisy and sometimes smelly
little being: we are loved unabashedly when
we are babies. Why? We are loved simply
for our presence in the world.

This doesn’t have to change, does it?

My mother’s goodbye prayer is now
deeply coded within my heart. “Goodnight,
my baby, I love you.” I don’t even know for
sure she said it or if God said it, for her, and
spoke what she wanted to say, aloud, to me.

It is wholly and holy unnecessary that I
know the speaker of the prayer.

What matters more is that now, today, I
receive the message completely.

That the speaker knows me for exactly
who I am and loves me, profoundly.

I realize also that the prayer, spoken, is
also directed at me to be conscious of the
quality of the love I give to others. Love
is something I can give unabashedly,
always, as well.

Today, I am going to practice that – with
a variety of people.