To all the mothers who make the world go ’round…

Dear all you mothers who make the world go ’round,

Yesterday as I cut roses from my garden, I was reminded of Mother’s Days past. How we, my little sister and I, wore a tiny red or pink rosebud to church that day. Momma wore red too, but because she was an adult in charge of things like money, she bought hers at the flower shop in town. Her corsage, a full grown rose, came in a clear plastic box with a long straight pin attached to the back for fastening to her dress. Nana wore a corsage of white gardenia, her favorite, each petal as soft as velvet, its perfume so strong and sweet that forty-five(!) years later, yesterday, when I walked past a gardenia bush at Westwood Gardens, the aroma pulled me over and vaulted me back to Brinkley Chapel. Just like that.

Nana wore a white flower because her Momma, my great-grandmother, died years before I was born. And even though I never met her, I’ve known her my whole life.

I arranged my freshly cut roses in simple glass jars and containers as I imagine my great-grandmother might have done.

I planted a new iris, an iris that reminded me of Nana, as iris always do.

I mailed a card to Momma, grateful she’s only a phone call or text message away.

I think of my daughter who lives in Austin, busy, working, thriving, and I’m thankful to be her mother.

Nana, Momma, Me, Kelsey

Several years ago, I shared the passage below, but I think it’s worth sharing again for this Mother’s Day.

“It is often said that the first sound we hear in the womb is our mother’s heartbeat. Actually, the first sound to vibrate our newly developed hearing apparatus is the pulse of our mother’s blood through her veins and arteries. We vibrate to that primordial rhythm even before we have ears to hear. Before we were conceived, we existed in part as an egg in our mother’s ovary. All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born. And this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother. We all share the blood of the first mother – we are truly children of one blood.” ~ Layne Redmond

Happy Mother’s Day friends,

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]To all the mothers who give us life and make the world go round #HappyMothersDay[/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:
Mother Like Mine, The Band Perry