mothers

If there are not mothers, where will men come from and who will feed them?

And I can't die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I'm a cracked plate.

Those moments when we learn that mothers rage and fathers kill, that friends betray and authority is fallible, or that our own blank, innocent ignorance can destroy the pure, the good, and the loved are moments the very memory of which constitutes the beginning of a strategy to live in a world where such horrors exist.

Who but my mother held those small pieces of my childhood? Where would they go when she was gone?

The wonder of life begins in the womb of a woman.

Mom, mom, mom, mom! A yowl rose from my gut, my bowels, my womb, raw as a birth cry but with no hope in it, a maddening howl, a roar, the water a wailing wall shattering around me. Unsyllabled, thoughtless, the cry rose from the oldest cells in my body. I hadn't known grief could be so primal, so crude. The violence shook me. When it stopped, I fell to my knees in the shower, and the water called to the water in me; I wanted to melt, to run down the drain and under the city to the creek and then to the river thirty miles away. Mom, mom, mom, mom!

MOTHER _ By Ted KooserMid April already, and the wild plumsbloom at the roadside, a lacy whiteagainst the exuberant, jubilant greenof new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,only the delicate, star-petaledblossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.You have been gone a month todayand have missed three rains and one nightlongwatch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellarfrom six to eight while fat spring cloudswent somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,a storm that walked on legs of lightning,dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.The meadowlarks are back, and the finchesare turning from green to gold. Those sametwo geese have come to the pond again this year,honking in over the trees and splashing down.They never nest, but stay a week or twothen leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts,burning in circles like birthday candles,for this is the month of my birth, as you know,the best month to be born in, thanks to you,everything ready to burst with living.There will be no more new flannel nightshirtssewn on your old black Singer, no birthday cardaddressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.You asked me if I would be sad when it happenedand I am sad. But the iris I moved from your housenow hold in the dusty dry fists of their rootsgreen knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to lookat the world, to see the life at play in everything,I would have to be lonely forever.

Ain__ nothing worse to a mama than losing her baby_

Ten years from now, her mother might not even recognize her. Already she was different, but the day would come when she'd be this person her mother had never seen. There would be other people - someone like Carolyn or Alan, or even Violet - who had known her longer than her mother ever did.

I missed my one true friend, my mother. She and I were close in a way I don't think many other mothers and daughters were. I slept beside her every night of my childhood: so near to her back, I could probably sketch the constellation of moles and freckles on her skin there. When I was a very little girl, every morning I would wake before her and arrange myself so that when she woke, we were eye-to-eye. I miss her, with a never-ending ache that I did not think was possible, that crowds out any other feeling and certainly all reason, and any good sense.

Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother. The eyes of a mother who has suffered the loss of a child can destroy the soul of anyone who gazes upon them. More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.

Children are the greatest blessing from God.

The birth of a child is supernatural spiritual event.

Empowered women empower women.

We all have to love you, and believe inyou, and think you are looking out for our best interests. But look at us, Momma, and really see us.

In the end, Mothers are always right. No one else tells the truth.

When it comes to broken trust, women are the master masons, building barriers that not even love can breach. But mothers_they are the architects.

The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.