And I Believed Her {A Listen to Your Mother Tribute}

me and my mama on my wedding day

I would stand in front of our
living room picture window, posed,
waiting for the record player's slow scraping to speed until music spilled out

filling the room and my fibers
as I danced and sang
into my hairbrush.

I felt so free. So alive.
Spinning, lungs burning
with oxygen, with words
tumbling out of my soul.

As the record slowed
I collapsed into a puddle
of five year limbs.

It was then that I saw her
standing in the doorway
wearing that look that puzzled me as a child...

She seemed to be looking at me, a thin lopsided smile on her face,
but also past me with her misted eyes to something in the future...
the mystic mama look she wore when she spoke of how fast I was growing.

I lay on my back looking up at her,
chest heaving to catch up
with my racing heart

She left the doorway
and scooped me into her lap
as she brushed a piece of moist hair back off my forehead she said,

"You have a beautiful voice."

And I believed her.

That's the power of Mamas.
They are right about so many things,
it's hard as a child to dispute them being right about you, too.

So I grew up believing that my voice had value.
That I could make the whole world stop and watch with a twirl and stanza into my hairbrush.
I carried my mama's words with me.

With time and a few knocks,
that mama voice gets clouded a bit -
uncertainty cracking the confidence in her being right.

But 24 years later found us standing alone in a library
facing each other woman to woman now
but she still reached to settle a strand of misplaced hair as she said,

"You have a beautiful voice."

And I believed her.

I walked across the library floor,
opened the door and smiled at two strangers
and witnessed the world stop again for five minutes with my words.

On Sunday,
she and I will be taking the trip
together

I've downloaded the very songs
that spun with my 5 year self
on that old record player

and I will stand before an audience
breathing deeply to steady that once more rapidly beating heart
repeating her words again and again in my head...

"You have a beautiful voice."

And I'll believe her.

After all,
you should always
LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER.

*tickets are still available for Milwaukee's show Sunday May 5th, 3:00pm at Wehr Hall on Alverno college campus.  You can purchase them on-line HERE, or cash only at the door.*

Reflection

Out of the corner of my eye I see you in front of the full-length mirror.

Hands down at your sides, head at the slightest of tilts - weighed by the process of taking in your less than 4-foot frame.

I am frozen by this fearless examination of self.  This candor that radiates from your skin.  I see in your eyes neither criticism or adoration, just curiosity to know yourself by the features that make you.

In my heart, I know that this will not be the only time you stand like this.  Not the only time you take to the mirror to tell you who you are.  So I enter the frame beside you, grab your hand and tell you what I see.



I start with your jawline,
the angled and slowly defining set of it
where you carry your grandmothers strength of will.

Show you that the chocolate color of your eyes
means that your daddy's always with you,
helping you take in this world.

Your rose red lips
are the gates of honesty and truth
wrapped in the slightest of smiles.

That your ears
have been shaped by beautiful music
in stories told, and the sound of your true voice.

That the fluid slope of your shoulders
shimmer with the Norwegian fjords that were braved before you,
and lead to capable hands that worked the land the day your mama was born.

I trace the thin, blue line of vein
just below your skin and tell you
that your blood pumps in iron-ore.

Have you close your eyes as I work up the length of your spine
whispering that it is the birch tree inside you,

slender but so strong.

Brush your hair behind your ear as

I tell you that you carry within you

the seeds of Eden.

That Eve whispered

the Life secret into your womb

while you were still being knit in mine.

Tell you that your laugh...

oh, your beautiful laugh belongs to the fairies.

That it is the song that wakes up spring, stirs the flowers from their slumber.

That your growing legs carry the cool strength

of the drug store counter your great-grandmother worked behind,

kicking up the dust of the Smoky Mountains.

Your feet stand of the foundation of 65 years of marriage

of love that withstood wars, cultures, and burying their own child -

dedication to love through all of life's changes.

I open your palms

and trace the lines

of all of your life yet before you.

Reminding you

of all that is to come ahead

and how you've been written in the stars above.

We lock eyes as I ask you

never to forget to see in your growing and changing frame

all that lies inside you.

You are more than societies latest standard of beauty:

waist size,

eyebrow proportions,

or skin type.

No daughter,

you wear the bones of your ancestors

under your developing skin.

You will walk your family to new places,
expand our history to include your present,
and will face your future with all of us tucked deep within.

{linking with Jen, Heather, Emily}

Listen To Your Mother

"Story is a search for community. 

As we tell each other who we really are, we find the people with whom we really belong.

Story brings us home."

~Christina Baldwin~

I believe in the power of stories.
The power of connection stories brings us.
The ability to know ourselves, our neighbors, and strangers better through shared expression.

Within the last year I've allowed myself to
bleed this truth out pen to page.
Typescript to screen.

But today?  Oh, darlin's....

Today,
I am unbelievably proud.
delighted.
down right giddy.
to announce my intentions to SPEAK this truth too.

I will be joining the 2013 Milwaukee cast of Listen To Your Mother.

The purpose of the show is to give Motherhood a microphone, heck a megaphone. And when mama speaks? Her community listens. What started as an one city, one night event to celebrate Mother's Day as a community {the beginnings told wonderfully HERE} in Madison Wisconsin, has evolved into a celebrated event being hosted in 24 cities across the country - including, for the first time, Milwaukee.

    Just a little over a week ago my mama drove 8 hours
to hold my hand, and to tip my chin high
as I went and auditioned.

I cannot begin to express here the significance of having my mama by my side,
except to say that it was one of the top 4 experiences we've shared together in 29 years,
2 of the 4 being the days I introduced her for the first time to her grandchildren.

I kept quiet about the audition
as I felt a peaceful hush within me
that needed to be honored.

No matter what the outcome,
just having my mother outside the door as I spoke my mother truth -
out loud...to strangers...
empowered me in ways that still glimmer and are growing inside me.

Afterwards, walking in the door to children
who looked at me expectantly and {perhaps a little too familiar with American Idol}
asked if I had "won."

The joy I felt about the ability to say
 I won
long before I knew if I had been chosen

because I'm still doing things that are scary,
that may not end up the way I want,
that take me places I didn't plan.

you know, the very things I encourage them to see through...

they see that their mama is 
in this big, beautiful mess
of discovery, too.

This joy,
it's not about "making it", no.
that's not what this event is about.

I truly and passionately
believe in the power of every person's story
on stage or off.

This joy,
is about belonging to this movement
being apart of its
spreading,
gaining voices,
dialects,
lilts, and
lives.

About women and men showing up to speak and listen.

It's about finding your story and hearing it connect to the greater story being told all around us.

....It's about finding yourself, home.


check out the Listen To Your Mother YouTube Channel full of amazing, breathtaking, honest stories that have been told in years prior. Careful, watching is more addictive than Pinterest. 

The Day I Knew My Calling

I grew under the shade of other people’s callings – my daddy’s to be a preacher, my brother’s to be a musician. The church around me bestowed gifts on its members, a topic of casual conversation and deep conviction. And still, I remained to myself almost 30 years, without calling; afraid of getting my calling wrong, of limiting myself, but mainly of failure.

An introvert in an extrovert world, I seemed to lack the outward hot passion in those that surrounded me. Withdrawing into my stories, I devoured words and penned my own. I stood on the hills of Tara beside Scarlett, hands and back aching with labor in the fields, the smell of the fire that consumed Atlanta seeped deep in my skin. I felt the soft fur brush upon my cheek, heard the snow crunch as I stepped from the wardrobe into Narnia, and lamented with Anne Shirley the fate of flame-red hair.

These characters, these stories became a part of how I viewed the world. They shaped my understanding that behind the headlines, history lessons, and artifacts of time were a host of real lives, personal stories that painted a picture fuller and deeper than what we were taught by just looking at statistics.

Until a year ago, I kept these lessons inside, exploring instead all the ways I thought I should be gifted. It has taken a year to unfurl what has always been a part of me: the need to be engrossed in the telling of humanity, the need to mark the world with my words, until I found myself fully claimed.

.............{continued}.............

Join me over at Emily's for the rest of the story for Imperfect Prose?  Join us HERE.

Twenty Years

20 years have risen and set

days drawn infinitely long
while the years,
like the white belly of the bird overhead, slip by.

20 years my skin has grown.

long,
as childhood made way for adolescence
shaping, curving around womanhood.

taunt and soft
as my skin harbored
two new lives beneath its surface.

while yours has remained underground.

20 years I have spent
matting the floor by your sleeping head
with my growing steps.

And yet,
I cannot escape the
cold February wind at my back.

those hot tears,
stinging, freezing
survivor streaks onto my 9 year old cheeks.

my hand
aching
as it clutched the raw earth.

the thud.
still hitting my ears
as I let the earth drop

against the box that wrapped you in deaths embrace.

that whittling cold
seeped inside me
hollowing a corner of my heart

the size
of the jagged pit
I watched you lowered into.

This grief  - the grey wolf
expertly weaving between the barren birch
in and out of view.

silhouetted on the
still clear night
by the rise of another moon.

it's lone cry,
reverberating over the snow covered ground
releases my own.


This month marks 20 years of having lost my heart's beacon. 
While life has certainly continued its sweet song, Amber's prompt "Box" reminded me of the box that reshapes me still.

Half Light of Morning

we sit side by side
sharing the blue blanket
in the half light of morning.

we've snuck downstairs
careful not to wake
the sleeping house

and for a moment
we just stare at each other,
no longer accustomed to this uninterrupted two-ness.

mother and first born.

you, who first filled my womb,
first stirred the quickening,
broke open the skies for me.

i see a faint bruise
on your elbow
that i don't know the origin of.

gone are the days of examining
every inch of your skin
for signs of undetected disease,

or the other ways
i was sure, being new to this,
i would fail you.

your legs now spindle
down next to mine
and i see the future

whispering not so far ahead
when they will surpass my own,
and you seem in no hurry to stop.

the way your brow furls deep lines:

then,
with concentration as you drew
nourishment from my breast

now,
with concentration as you solve
math problems and complete worksheets.

how it became my habit
to take my thumb and smooth them calm...
you do this on your own now.

then and now,

when you sleep,
your lashes spread out
black lace across a porcelain white cheek.

as we sit, i can see that already
there is a part of you that
remains under the blanket just to appease me.

your mind onto
the next level of your video game,
and the ropes course in gym.

you handle my heart carefully
knowing intrinsically
that if you grew up all at once, it would break me.

so you start small,
retreating in steps
only a mama would detect.

you stretch your boundaries
but never forget to look back
to flash me a reassuring smile.

in the half light of morning,

i'm learning you anew
taking slow, deep breaths of your spirit
that i can forgot to do in the daily grind of life.

expanding my heart
to allow you room to grow
into the man that you will become.

you examine my face,
lean close and whisper
"I have your eyes"

the rising sun
hitting our shared hazel streaks
and making our deep irises glisten.

and in the half light of morning,

all at once
i feel it...

you're learning me anew, too.




{Linking with Jen, Heather and Emily where the prompt for this week is: LIGHT}

Dreamcatcher

To become a mother 

is to become a dreamcatcher.

source: Pinterest

{I catch}







the moment your face
breaks with surprise
that we're spending the day at Disney World.

the laughter that explodes
from your top bunk
when you're supposed to be sleeping.

the sun pooling on your bedhead
as you emerge drowsy from sleep
to take in Puerto Rico.

the joy in your upturned face
as confetti rains softly down
and sticks to your smile





your backs
pressed up against
the age of the earth

as you take in
the size of your body
against the expanse of the world.

As your mother,
I am the catcher of memories, joys, and
dreams of childhood.

Responsible to weave these droplets,
these multitude of moments into a web
so when the wind blows, threatening to scatter -

the web will hold taunt and strong,
even when you falter.
when the world seems too raw, or the obstacle too great.

I'll point to the collection of your life experiences
and whisper -
"no child.  See here?  You carry all of this inside you."

I am responsible for linking the ordinary days with the extraordinary,
threading the beads of a lifetime
to drape across your necks.

to put your toes in far off oceans.
to open your eyes to all the places yet to discover.

to hold you closely
as the day draws its shade
putting your ears to my chest so you may hear the rhythm of my heart -

that which nurtured you,
and sang to you your first lullaby
whilst you were still in my depths, in the warm waters of creation.

I dedicate myself to man the loom of your beautiful tapestry of life experience and unwavering worth.

I will let this dreamcatcher
dance in the light breeze upon a tree branch,
let it dazzle in the sun

so that you may peer into the web
we are building together
and see your reflection shine.

source: Pinterest

... Won't you join us over at Emily's today where the inspiration for this week's Imperfect Prose is:

 Mother?