I have come to believe that we all choose our parents and each of us gets exactly the mother and father we need in this particular life on this earthly plane.

I was afraid that when my mother died, I would fall apart.  I didn't, not for long anyway.  And truly, she is not dead but lives in me.  My mother is the well that I go to for every one of my creative endeavors.

 

And Daddy?  Daddy is the source of my intellectual curiosity and passion.  I still hear his voice clearly as he explained all sorts of phenomena to me, always, of course, from a very scientific point of view.  

How many times have my own boys asked me the same questions I asked Daddy, and automatically, my voice began channeling his voice as I answered?  

The parents we need may not be the ones that would have been 'easy' or undemanding. Believe me, nothing was very easy at our house.  But easy is not what life is about, is it?  

And though my parents have both been gone for several years, in some ways, I feel their presence more intimately now than I ever did before their deaths.  

The landscape of my own family history, which I thought I knew so well when I was younger, is now continually revealed to me from new perspectives.  

This poem, titled In the Landscape of My Story,  is for Mother and Daddy. 

 

In the landscape of my story

I re-plow and revise

I winnow ancient memories

The chaff, I cast aside

 

The vapors of old phantoms

From across the River Styx

Rebound from distant shores

Now changeable, unfixed

 

And luminous as starlight

I run to their embrace

Disappointments are forgiven

And old wounds are erased

 

Engulfed by sweet compassion

Mistakes are swept away

In the landscape of my story 

Now only love remains

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Be Well and Good Luck,

Martha Maria 

copyright 2012