mothers

5/11/14

it's mother's day, and as with any holiday, i've spent part of my time thinking about what the holiday is for, aside from consumerism.  there are a lot of great ladies in my life, including my own mother, who has, after several years of rejection, finally received (not officially yet) a promotion at the university.  this is a woman who, since she began raising a family, has dedicated her professional life to the obtainment of a solid position.  she has worked at the university for over a decade, and with the effects on higher education because of budget cuts, even recently was at risk of retrenchment.  it strikes me that this term is associated with war, and reminds me of the uncertainty that still exists once one succeeds in getting a good job.  but more importantly, i am reminded of how hard my mother has worked to care for her family.  how much she has given, blood, sweat, and tears, in the name of motherhood.  i hope that once she does retire (which is not so far away) she is able to do more of the things that she enjoys doing.  i hope that she transitions into a different chapter as gracefully as she has done through so much of the changes in her life.  i feel so blessed to have a mother as intelligent, lovely, supportive, and artistic as mine.  she was the first to encourage me to explore the different pieces of myself.  i took violin in elementary school, danced in front of the school at choir assemblies to routines that she choreographed (i volunteered her).  just yesterday i was doing a jazzed up rendition of yankee doodle dandy--the song i tapped to the first time (it was susie snowflake the second).  and bless ms. stillwagon for letting me dance at those performances too!  my mom paid for a ceramics class at the center for the arts, and before then had enrolled me in summer art classes there and locally.  later, she took grace and me to piano lessons.  we moved from one teacher to another, and the second one turned me off from playing, but then my mom paid for voice lessons for us until they became to expensive (i didn't enjoy it because she refused to play anything but tunes from musicals, which never gave me a chance to play with my own "voice" and the range i was strongest in).  one summer, she enrolled me in a summer dance camp at point park college.  i also took tap with one of her colleagues, ms. gibbs, until i became too self conscious in dance attire to continue.  my mother still encourages my writing.  she can't wait for me to write a book of some sort, and has ideas for screenplays frequently (as do i).  we talk of collaborating, working together as a mother-daughter team to make money.  i was looking at the pictures from the cruise that we took, and feeling grateful, again, for having the opportunity to travel with my mom.  it had been years since she and i went somewhere together, and it was the only time i can remember, aside from commuting to work with her, that she and i were able to travel just the two of us.  i think about how our relationship has grown, and i am so thankful.