misplaced mama

There were days where I would spend over an hour every morning out on my back deck surrounded by bougainvillea, or out by a river at a mountain base , or in a greenhouse attached to my cabin (depending on where I lived) going in and out of asana, sipping green tea, sitting in meditation,  learning to chant in Sanskrit.  I’d take my southern slow time laying in savasana, never really needing to get up in a rush to someone’s calls or cries; back then my job had a given  “start-time” so it was easy to plan and play yoga every morning for as long as I wanted.

 All that practice led me to open a yoga studio.  Then I had a baby.  Then I became a yoga studio owner that had a baby.  When that didn’t work for me and the baby, I became a mama who just so happened to own a yoga studio.  And when that didn’t really work for the studio, I became just a mama who was a student and occasional teacher of yoga.

 Now I don’t know what I am.

 But it seems like I am a constant complainer of things like lack of time, finding a quiet place and the absence of energy to actually practice yoga on the mat.  I could get up at 4am, an hour before my youngest awakes with the Inca dove song and get out the mat and practice but I don’t want to do that.  I want to be sleeping then. 

 But this is not the path of the yogi.  To live with limitations and closed doors.  No, I refuse to go on like this.  And I refuse to beat myself up, judging my body.mind shape from lack of physical practice.  I entered a space a couple years back where I bitched and moaned and felt never alone and helpless…and lost without a practice.  This room was filled with the echo of my fears, where I got to hear them back at me.  They rang in my ears for a bit too long. So from them I learn.

 Yoga is about every moment of every day. To unite each breath with the next. To flow or jump or sit or walk into life with no limits, only possibilities and the chance at creating grace. it’s so not about a mat, a class, a series…no way.  So I have been trying. While I fry up an egg at the stove, I lift my right leg and place my foot up my thigh and balance in tree. I notice how different it is to balance there while keeping the egg from burning and while Sula tries to climb up my grounded limb. I notice how I wobble and my alignment is totally off and in no way am i really in tree pose, but I am because i am balancing and watching and aware.  While I sit and nurse the  little one, I cross my legs and close my eyes and breathe in and out, slowly, letting go of each floating moment, knowing that each is the last. While she bites me, I breathe her off of me, gently put her down and hold her hands, sing her a song about nipple biting being plain old wrong.  While I am reading Dr. Suess on the ground, I spread my legs wide, flex my feet, open my toes and lengthen my spine, I exhale my body down to Old Hat New Hat‘s open face out on the rug and I read while I stretch forward.  Spine opens.  My breath becomes deeper.  Mia climbs on my back, pushing me further down.  I read slower.  While we drive to the market, I keep my mala beads in the car and I chant.  The kids begin to chant along.  We are all singing to the Om spot in the universe where abundance dances, and that will be echoed back to us.  It will because we sing it loud.

 My thinking mind tells me this is not enough.  This is not enough, not enough, not barely enough!!  To protect my lower back, I need more. This is not enough to keep my spinal fluids circulating, this is not enough to keep me limber for full lotus.  This practice will not float me into Scorpion.  This practice, instead might, just maybe, keep me momentarily sane.  But this is not enough.  Where is my seclusion, my solo, formal time to manipulate my flesh into thinking it is only humming space?  Living in the community-less, village-less, isolated culture, I am losing myself in toddler and preschool muck.  Where is my yoga village??? Not enough! The fears, doubts, exhausting monkey-chatter grows in my head.  Then I swing my legs over to once side of the chair I am sitting on, watching my girls eat breakfast, “washing” their hands in their almond butter from their toast and making handprints on the table with it.  I plant my feet on the ground.  I reach my arms behind me and exhale big and I touch the ground with my palms.  The chair supports my body, and my heart is opening so wide, so wide, my belly big and the world: enough.  This is so enough.  It’s every thing there is.

 I am trying to learn to find myself in those little moments, knowing now that those big ones, 2 hour blocks of time filled with spiritual orgasm no longer live in my world.  And that is okay, because now my world consists of 2 little gurus, and a million moments in the day where I can expand from nothing to everything.  When I get down and have to go break up a mini-cat-fat between ragged nailed scratching sisters over LuLu the Doll, I can be conscious, aware, gentle. 

 It’s all I can do.  So it must be so much.  My kids, who seem to get more of a yoga practice than me, twisting and turning and inverting in their moment to moment play, watch me while kick my leg up into Shiva Dance while I pick up their books from the floor that one may be throwing in a tantrum, because shit like that goes down all the time in my house.  Next thing I know, they stop throwing books and  try it out, too.  All three of us trying to balance on one leg while we pick up books off the ground. Giggling. We are all learning. This is so much greater than it can ever even seem.

I am exactly 33 and 6 months today.

I feel an influx of purity and whiteness.  A rush of light.  Perhaps a request for me to cleanse, let go, surrender to this opportunity for lengthy light to permiate at all levels. To burn through the fear and doubt I hold at cellular levels, to hold hands with and lift up the glory and joy I am made from.

I will not take on any detailed or organized endeavors today. I put away my To Do’s.  I say screw it to the eternal task of weeding out and packing.  Instead I will bask in the light, through my window, maybe even get daring and ignore the "heat warning" and hang underneath a tree, eating little cakes and sipping mint sun tea with the girls.  Telling them stories about the birth of the Sun and the Moon and the way the dance together.

I am grateful for this new energy of Summer, Litha.  She brings us the hope that these days will shorten; they will grow darker sooner, we will be able to internalize and hybernate and burrow once again, feeling the light slip away from us gradually and effortlessly from here on forward, but for now, we live in this Solstice moment. We are alive and open and energized by The Sun.  The Moon, the darkness, will have it’s chance soon.  She waits for this bright introduction, and takes stage as soon as the orange and red seep into the horizon.

The Sun and Moon. Ha-Tha. Yin Yang.  It is truly a balance to witness and learn from.

Let there be Light.  And there is.

Happy Solstice! 

"Mama, why are you crying"

I take her naked body in close and whiff a bit of her stinky head of hair, matted and wild.

"Remember the twins I told you about?  The babies that came out of their mama’s belly very early? Well, Liam,"  I point to his picture on what seems to be this totally impersonal screen but in reality turns out to be an energetic network of support and love and friendship and knowledge in this big small world of ours.   "Liam, right here, this sweet little baby boy went back to the Source this morning.  He was not ready to live on Mama Earth just yet."

"He died."

"Yes, baby he died.  But I am not crying for him.  He is happy.  So happy and at peace and living in light.  I am crying for his mama and dada, because I know they will miss him so.  It’s not sad to die, it’s sad for the people who love and will miss him."

"Okay, mama."

Later that day I pull up the screen of a mother’s words who just lost her son so I can them to read to my husband.   Every other day he asks about the twins and how they are doing. As Bill reads, Mia crawls back on my lap and looks me in the eyes.

"Baby Liam is happy now because he does not have to have those wires on his mouth, mama. He didn’t like those. He lives with the sky and father sun.  He is laughing.  But his mama misses him.  Yeah, he’s happy."  She climbs down and practiced skipping down the hallway singing, "He’s happy, happy, happy.  He’s happy."

And like birth, death is the exhale at the end of the inhale and the inhale at the end of the exhale and the space where we just float in between.  

Little Liam Stewart I am assuming that you know all this because now you are all-knowing, but let me say that you have taught me so much in your just- over- a -month time here on Earth.  I have never met you, but you spoke through your mother, in ways more poetic then the ocean or the peaks of the most impressive mounts.  You spoke through your mother like a voice withing a wise cocoon, and you shared with me how to let go and metemorphose, crawl out of my scared skin and face the fears that loom at the heart of every mother, parent: loss.   Your mother’s courage and wisdoms and peace and eloquence stiched every inch of my life every day that she wrote of your journey, and I through it I found a bit of hope in the center of moments that passed by me with difficulty and pain.  I am a better person because you were born, too early for this Earth perhaps, but your soul is old, magic and wise like an owl,  and your presence is evermore. Your presence is evermore.  Always.

Fly high, Liam.  Shine on us all.  We love and need your guidance here. 

Peace.

Peace.

Peace. 

I wonder if I will miss my dry, 1950ish Hallcraft ranch house, (which is undergoing modern updates and refinements as I type) when I live in a most likely moldy and wet, turn of the century in-need-of-restoration cottage in my new town.  I wonder if my house will have a fireplace. I hope it does.  As soon as this house sells, we are moving.  Which if my gut is right, will be soon.

We put this little gem up on the market in about 2 weeks.  After that we just manifest the perfect buyer, the one who will walk in here and notice the love, the stone, the bamboo, the tiles…will feel the vibes of life being born right there in the center of the living room, will sense that love was practiced here.  And then say, "Hey, this house is like 50k less than any other in this neighborhood with the same comps!  I’ll take it!" I hope it’s a family with A Little or 2.  I hope they need a place under 300k because that is all they have and this place will give them the opportunity to live in a house in a neighborhood surrounded by parks and markets.  I want to pass this gift on to someone else.  Then move on.

 When this home sells we going to meander of the pacific coast line and hang out here and there and be a family with nowhere to go but the ocean or the local taco stand.  For a month there will be no job to go to.  Our job will be to cleanse.  And laugh.  And play.  And sleep under the stars once in a while, listening to the water and the moon do there thing against the sand.  B and Mia will build eco-friendly sand castles with solar panels and Sula will cling to me as I wade her into the sea.  We will collect little crabs.  I will wash my hair in ocean and probably end up with a gnarly set of dread but I could care less. 

When we are done we will have arrived here.  Our new home.  Like a magnet this subdued little city on the Pacific with Mt. Baker as it’s guardian has drawn me in.  Outdoor theaters, farmers markets daily, some of the cleanest darn air around, and one of the greenest cities in the country, designated a Green Power Community.   There is cooperative school there where they welcome homeschool children to come and participate in what they want/need.  It’s a port town.  It looks out to the San Juan Islands.  A ferry service provides rides to ALASKA on a daily basis.  It is between Vancouver and Seattle, an easy drive to both.  It’s rainy and gray from November to April and then sunny and nice the rest of the time.  I am in a perpetual state of squint here in the desert so I think my eyes and my wrinkles will love the break.  Plus eventually, the winter will be a perfect excuse to travel back here…or perhaps South America. Or Greece.  Or Africa.

This decision has lightened my heart.  Eased my mind.  As much as I try to see beauty everywhere, this particular area has not been set up to examplify natural beauty, it is a developers haven.  We have always intended to raise our kids in a small city surrounded by pristine and grand nature, nature that is a stones throw away.  We want to live in a place where it is not a fight to protect the earth , instead be in a tight community who lives to guard the beauty and quality of life. And Bellingham has it.  Plus is has a bit of grit, grunge and funk…gotta have that, too.  

I look forward to recording our journey, though not sure how often I will find free wi-fi on the road, but somehow I will mark in time this new turn on life.  For the first time in a very long time I am excited.  My nomad in me has awoken again and is trying to find the perfect shoes to take on this journey.  To move is freedom.  To finally find a home is bliss.  Funny how I already feel at home somewhere I don’t even live.  

Maybe I am not misplaced afterall. 

“Mama? I just had scary thoughts.”

I reach down and turn the knob, lowering the song of one scratchy, sweet- n- low, cream infused, heroin-inspired voice of Billie Holiday down to a bluesy whisper, dancing with the hum of the car. I dangerously turn around to glance in her eyes while driving the car and grab her hand.

“Tell me; please tell me about your scary thoughts.” I squeeze her hand three times.  Our “passed down from generations” code for: I. Love. You.

“I fell into the water and you tried to get me but you couldn’t so the shark ate me.”

Damn her father and his pseudo-Jack Sparrow sailing tales of his life at age 10 with his freakishly brave but old gray-pony tailed parents and their 30 foot cruiser filled with stick spears and Tupperware containing 3 years worth of dry goods.  His not-so-tall tales include but are not limited to encounters with persistant barracudas and underwater hide-n-seek-dances with Moray eels.  Vivid action scenes of grandpa fighting off an 8-foot bullhead shark, stabbing the fucker between the eyes over and over again with a spear tip while it encircled him with blood and flesh cravings.  Episodes of terrifying storms where sailing into the center was the only way to survive. Stories about island witch doctors that healed with rattling cans of sharks teeth and shots of rum and how eating raw conch straight from the shell was sweet ecstacy. She has heard these tales, and many more, since her ears could hear, filling her once blank canvas with coral reef colors. These are the stories that have put her to sleep when nothing else could.  These are the stories for lazy hammock days in the springtime.  These are the fantastical visions animated in techni-colors, no doubt, in my child’s mind.  She can geekishly identify most sea species, from frisky little critters who will want to play with you during underwater run-ins, to the ones who will want to chomp you down to bloody bits for dinner. 

Think MB, think before you speak.  My mother infuriated me my whole life by never validating my childhood fears.  When I would come downstairs crying after scary thought or dreams, I’d hear: “Hunny, please.  There is nothing to be scared of!”

Liar. There is plenty to be scared of.  For instance, sharks.  Armed prowlers.  Becoming a mother.  Phone collectors.  Long sharp needles.  Salmonella poisoning. Tsunamis.

“I won‘t let you fall in the water, so the shark could never eat you.  I’d always catch you before you fell as long as I was with you.  Daddy, too.”

“It still scary, mama.”  She is quiet and serious.

“Ok then.  Let’s say this: It’s ok to be scared, but I can let it go because I am safe and my mama and dada and sister are with me.

Her littlest pea of a voice touches the back of my head as I drive the ramp onto the freeway, cars whiz by us video came style in slurs of red and yellow stripes.

“It’s ok to be scared.  It’s ok to be scared but I’m gonna let it go cause I’m safe with mama, dada and sula. It’s ok to be scared, but I’m gonna let it go….

She repeats, like the mantras she is so familiar with, a few more times and then I glance in the mirror to see her eyelids cover her eyes; down once, open, down twice, open.  And then finally the curtain closes and her breathing begins to circulate with the hum of the car and the quiet bluesy whines from Billie Holiday.  Her head hangs low and her chin bops up and down against her chest.  Damn carseat with no neck support.  I reach back again, quite dangerously while manning the wheel, and fix her so she is up right. 

I turn the knob up high and let that drowsy druggy voice fill the car nice and loud, to drown out the suddenly invasive fears that seemed to charge into my head just that moment.

“It’s okay to be scared.  My babies are safe.  It’s okay to be scared.  Moving my life again will be fun as always.  It’s okay to be scared.  This world will rise above the war and the greed.  It’s okay to be scared.  I can be this mother.”

I stumbled across this on You Tube.

That is one serious breastfeeder. Wow.  I am in awe, curious, intrigued about this extended of a breastfeeding relationship.  And in some ways, if I am to be truly honest with myself, I am a bit skeeved by it.  It horrifies me to admitt this, but it makes my belly do a weird turn.  This is not the person I think of myself as, this is especially not the person I want to admitt to being. I do not judge this family in the least, that is not it.  But when I put myself in the context of nursing a child of that size…I shudder.  It is not the primitive blood line in me that screams "no fucking way", it is the modern brainwashing that I have fallen victim to.  I know I feel this way because we just *don’t* nurse our children for that long in this culture.  I don’t know what this says about me, except that I am weak and impressionable and perhaps I ‘can’t be considered a "true" advocate of child-led weaning and extended breastfeeding.  Perhaps if I lived in a culture where the whole community was nursing well past 5 or 6 years old and kids nursed communily on other family and friends so mothers can have a break, then maybe I could see it….but I don’t and we don’t and it’s just not what my eyes see.  I don’t want to beat myself for being honest with myself, but then again I am a bit ashamed that I can’t look beyond the 4 year old mark of weaning (seems like an old age to most people, but I am part of mother community where that is and can be the norm).  Maybe Iif  personally knew someone who nursed their kid at 7, I could open my mind and play with the notion of allowing my child to nurse until then or longer…whenever they wanted to stop.  But perhaps I am way too selfish of my body and way too conditioned with western culture.  I only hope to work on myself more and learn to be more open.

That being said… 

Sula is almost two years old and it seems that her need to nurse just keeps getting stronger.  Every time I sit down for a moment to read, check my email, pay a bill, she’ll be there reaching up for me, "Mama, mama, night-nightsie, night-nightsie".  Her head cocked, a sillt smile on her face, her eyes glistening.  Most of the time I am game but lately it feels like my right boob is severly bruised from her pull and suck and it really hurts; her mouth is like a plunger. She calls the right one "Pink One" and the other one, "Big One".  At one point the left one used to be big, but now it’s just the saggy, rolled out, pathetic pancake one.  I have been avoiding nursing her in public, like today at the library she begged me and I explained we are at the library to read, when we get home we can do night-nights.  She got up, told Mia and I to "come on guys", walked over to the stroller, started to push it, and said "Sula go home now.  Night-nightsie."  It’s not that I care what other people think, I am just starting to feel annoyed with having her climb on me and pull at me and yank my shirt down while other people are around, like in the library at story time or in a restaurant.  It’s mostly because of the physical discomfort I get when we are not at home on the couch and a good position. It’s also pushing 105 degrees around these parks.  F-in Hot to be a host.  And maybe I am lying a little bit about not caring what people think.  I don’t like the looks I get.  Maybe I do feel weird when a man walks by and takes a peek, regardless if he wants to see some nipple or if he chooses to looks in disgust.  I get both those looks from men and women quite a bit in my bottle feeding ‘hood. I feel like I should be hiding the fact I nurse a 2 year old and that makes me really, really sad.  I mean, the mother in the video really is my hero…she nursed a 7 year old on BBC for goodness sake!  What a brave, unhindered soul yearning to change the way we looks at breasts and how we treat our children.  I admire that greatly.  I wish I could be as brave. After reading the comments regarding the video, it’s easy to see that literally nobody can see the truth in what she is doing.  These people are not perverts, these people just desire to honor their children and not hide the fact that they are children with strong bonding needs.

There is no such thing as "discreet" when a 2-year old is milking you.  And I question why I have to be discreet of course, I mean, plastic boobs run in herds around here and anywhere we look in this country, from magazines at grocers or billboards along the city highways— tits, ass, and the de-sensitization regarding the female body is in effect.  It’s okay for 8 year old girls** to prance around the mall in 6 inch long Von Dutch mini skirts and candy cane stripped tube tops before they have a make-over at Libby Lu (a.k.a. Make Me Look Like A Tiny Stipper), but it’s questionable whether it’s okay if I pull out my boob to settle down and feed my girl in the same mall. To feel this is so not like me.  I usually could give a damn, but when search down deep, I guess I do. Just as I was a bit grossed about the almost 8 year old nursing, I guess I don’t want anybody to look at me and feel the same way I did. What a hyporcrite I am.  Maybe it’s for the energy sake of my girls; I know they know when other people glance at us in less than approving ways.  I know Sula can feel me cringe when I sense a disapproving stare while they walk by and see her nursing in the Ergo while we grocery shop.  And maybe this happens with only 1 out of 20 people.  But it happens.  And those times it does happen sticks deeply in me.

I am not in any feeling like those are pressures to stop, not at all, but they are pressures that my raw human-side feels.  And I feel it silently from strangers as well as friends and family who I know think 2 is pushing it with breastfeeding.  I guess it makes me sad.  Sad that I look upon others that way.  Sad that I am looked upon that way.  Sad that this culture feels the need to hide precious events like birth and breastfeeding from the public…especially from our youth. 

And that being said…
 

Some days I am so ready to wean.  Just be done.  But some days I can’t even get over the gratefulness I feel when I look down and her big brown eye is looking up at me.  Pure love.  I will never feel good about those days when Mia was the exact same age as Sula, even younger, when I was at the end of my pregnancy and trying desperately to wean her.  Her need was so primal, her will was so strong, she made it clear she needed my flesh, that she needed my milk like a humming bird on a flower.  And though I tandemed nursed them both until Mia was 2 1/2 years old, I will admitt I resented nursing Mia at the very end of the pregnancy and especially those first few weeks with a newborn.  I did not want to do it, but I did. Now I look back and compare what Sula is going through and see that this cusp, this age from 1 to 2 years old is a serious transition: powerful and impressionable.  They are changing and growing in a fast way; becoming verbal commuinicators, mobile and agile, precise, imaginative.  They are becoming. Blooming.  And what could offer them better support than mama’s milk?  I wish i could go back and be more patient with Mia at that time.  She was so small.  I am so glad I did not force weaning with her, but I also wish I could have done it with a bit lighter heart, with deeper breathes, with more relaxed shoulders.  Which I try to do with Sula.  I don’t plan on letting relationship completely go anytime soon, but I must honor and validate the challanges of "extended" breastfeeding.  It can, at times at least, be a very tiring, hopeless road for me. I must be gentle with myself for feeling annoyed and invaded and sucked dry.  It’s okay to feel that way.  I guess it’s okay to feel all different kinds of ways.  As long as we are trying not to judge others or ourselves.  Who really cares.

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 **Something I am too tired to write about but needs to be thought about: Where I live, I am not lying when I say that 8 year olds prance around the local mall in scimpy clothes, made up, with cell phones glued to their ears.  And this sight very well might disturb me MUCH more than the almost 8 year old in the UK nursing.  Obviously 2 very different choices…but what is more "perverse"?  To nurse at that age or to exude a totally independent sexuality that resembles that of a 20 year old? 

You give me hope.  When a lot of this life business get me looking behind, ahead, up, down, all I have to do is look at you; smell your neck, hold you small hand, examine your chewed up nails, take in each scrape and scratch and bruise and devour your chubby elbows and I get gently placed right here.  Now.  With you.  My hope.

You inspire me to over- accessorize with cheap dollar store glittery scarves and plastic multifaceted gem bangles.

It’s you who drives me to become a better writer and yogi.  I do my arts for me, but my girl, in essence they are for you.  I want you to know all parts of me. The swing pushing, pancake making, cuddling mama I am is of the utmost importance, which is who I am for you. But I want you to know more, the other parts you help me water.  We learn by witnessing evolution in the soul and I want you to watch me grow as I watch you.  To pass on my gifts to you somehow; the art of mothering and the art of life, would make me sigh in relief.

You entertain me.  I am never bored watching you romp around naked, making up marvelous songs about life and friends that I don’t have the wise eye to see.  Your stories about your ‘old mother’ Sarah, and your ‘father’ Asha and ‘you’ aptly names, Zaza thrill me.  It’s not like I thought I’d have a kid with a dull imagination, what kid does?  But actually living your vibrant mind stories have been an unexpected awe of motherhood; I am floored with giddiness, despite the fact Sarah, your ‘old mother’ "got dead when the firewoman ran into her".

You remind me that life whizzes right on by.  Your voice in it’s valleys and hills, your eyes dark army on the inside, dark brown circling round, remind  me to enjoy it’s delicate, savory taste moment to moment.

You teach me to be courageous.  To jump off rocks with my eyes closed.  To play with tigers and snakes under blanket tents.  And because of you I know that to eat a meal out of sugar once in a while isn’t gonna kill me.  To sing no matter how off key my voice is. You have made me braver than I ever thought I would be.  I am stepping out of any box; any false sense of security that this world offers, I pass over and go straight for the path less traveled; the one we views of unicorns, red bulls, magic slides, and large creatures you call Gadazazas. The one where I am fiercely myself; wild, weird, restless, ritualistic.  I do this for you. I want you to keep the grand valor you possess and how will that be if I don’t hold mine high above my head like burning chariot. No fear.  We are made of no fear.

And when we are scared, you have taught me to curl up under the blanket with another person, or alone, helps chase it away.   

You answered my numerous calls for you over many years before you were inside me. Thank you for coming here.  There is no feeling like having a baby for the very first time.  And you my special angel, you are my first. The first heart that beat inside of me besides my own.

I often think of you as a new soul; your excitement and raw desire to keep your eyes open, trying, touching, curious about everything that you pass on your way and your need to prove your awesomeness to the world makes me think you are fresh.  But now and again, I see this ageless, wise shift, like a new wind on a sand dune.   You may know more than I can fathom.  Perhaps you know so much you tackle each incarnation with Beginners Mind.  A true avatar in the making.  A simple child.

I have always wanted to be a big sister.  Watching you become one, your struggles, your sensitivity, your joy and delight in making your sister laugh (and cry) lets me in on the world of big sisterhood just a bit.

I am grumpy lately.  Impatient.  Dreading the pending heat, a heat nobody should have to endure, I become testy.  But you walk by my side, holding my hand, looking up at me with those saucers, your wispy feathery hair glowing in the ever-present sun, and you still love me, honor me, guide me. You share your coconut popcycle, sticky drops down your hand, I get to lick clean.

You open my eyes to the Venusian beauty, the cosmos sparkle, the utter refined sense of style and taste for all things fine and fancy.  There is something about a Rose, and you are a rose.  I breathe you in, the scent of pricelessly smooth petals, the softness, the utter decadence and purity and class of the scent soothes me and heals me.  And then I revere you for your thorns, powerful and sharp defense of earth; which protect you and insist that you be handled with care and caution.  You are sharp and soft.  You’re a gentle kind, but you kick some ass if need be.

You move me.  There are no other words my imagination can conjure up. Not even the earthquakes I have survived seemed to have shaken me up, moved me around, thrown me inside out and sat me straight quite like you do.

I honor you. 

I love you.

I will always protect you with vibrant love.

 
Ma

(What you like to call me now and I love it.)