"Say I Love You Everyday with your mouth"

Collage by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, one of the authors of the important forthcoming book:

Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines

Edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams

(The graphic is from "About Alice Walker, The Official Website")

We have frost on the ground. I spotted it when I climbed the gravel road. "Are you on a mission?" Jude asked when we spotted each other this morning.

"Heading for the Rosemary bush." I was dressed in my old red rubber boots, red fleece robe, blue hoodie, multi-colored Dikka Ballantine hat, and my light green cook's apron. Loaded for bear. 

The Rosemary growing twenty five feet higher than we, down on the flats on Camp Bamboo, was spiky with her many upright green fingers and a definite coat of frost on the ground cover. A big cast iron skill bubbling with breakfast hash was cooking on the burner. Sprigs of fresh Rosemary would add a taste of aliveness and spark on this cold morning.

On my way back to the the cooking place, I looked up and saw Mahina in her 'Ole Phase Gown; she is half lit. She'll be present for much of today. The breakfast hash was hearty and full of flavor. Sitting in the seats of our dining car, Scout our Subaru, warmed up to take the chill off, Pete and I enjoyed the warm food. A clear sky with Mahina, the Moon present in the day, the present of both Sun and Moon heats the Mothering Sense within me. 

I've been visiting Alice Walker's website, gleaning encouragement for the lumpy journey as Makua o'o (elder in training) and share the collage above from her website, and poems from that same site. Prior to the US Elections, Alice Walker wrote:

"To Vote --

Say I Love You Every Day:

© 2020 by Alice Walker

You must say aloud

I love you

You must say aloud
I love you
At least five times
Every day.

You will feel it immediately
In your heart
And know
You are doing
It right."

CLICK here to read the entire poem on her website. 

And her most recent poem:

 Yes

©2020 by Alice Walker

We will just keep going
Until we drop
And this is not a sad thing.
All the leaves that ever lived
Did the same.

The Sun brightens the inside of the vardo. I trust Mahina is still in her path in the Sky as well. Sips on the warm Comfrey leaf infusion slide comfortable down my gullet. Lucky we have the simple single burner for cooking.

Minutes before sitting to draw out this imagined story, that instinct and practice -- to mother -- said it's not too early to give my son a call. A single bar of connection was available on the old fliptop phone. I found his number on my Contacts tab, pressed it and waited for that (still amazing to me) crap shoot to give me a win.

"Good morning," I said when he answered, said, 'Hello." It wasn't too early. The midwife was coming for breakfast, and a check-in in a few minutes. "How about I call again, we can drive down (the hill where there is no 'big phone' signal) and find a place where we can see each other (Facetime)?" We found a good time to do that; in a couple hours.

My son and his partner, and Pete and I prepare for the birth of our newest Ancestor. From our place across the Pacific, Alice Walker's poetry encourages my instincts and the practices that are what I can do: "Say I Love You Everyday with your mouth" ... it's that bridge-building between the mundane and sacred again. Kinship. 

 

I'm grateful to be practicing mothering. Grateful to be a Mother and soon a Tutu. Yes, the instinct is strong. And Yes, the practice tunes my heart muscles and saying 'I love you with my mouth'? Can't hurt right?

 

The anthology Revolutionary Mothering is described this way, on our local Sno-Isle Library website:

"An anthology that gives access to the voices of mothers of color and marginalized mothers, women who are in a world of necessary transformation. The challenges faced by movements working for antiviolence, anti-imperialist, and queer liberation, as well as racial, economic, reproductive, gender, and food justice are the same challenges that marginalized mothers face every day. Revolutionary Mothering is a movement-shifting anthology committed to birthing new worlds, full of faith and hope for what we can raise up together."

I've reserved a copy of the book. 

Assembling this post has a very patch-worked look to it. Safety pins of odd lot sizes hold it together as I put words and paragraphs together.  Why is that? Why is it so cobbled together? And geez, why would I risk publishing it? 

Astrology helps answer these questions. The week just beginning includes:

"On Monday, take it all in. If it feels a bit strange, that’s even better. Strange but satisfying is what we’re going for. New. New is good. Stay humble and open your heart." - Satori

Pocket keeps suggesting I read stuff. I finally bite, and read "My Mom" written by Mary H K Choi. My intuition already knows it's an article written with so many of the secret longings I keep under transparent wrap. Like the cheap almost as good as SARAN stuff. The camouflage that people like Pete spot because he knows most of my tricks.

"You seemed to be tongue-tied, like you didn't know what to say." He's saying this to me after we finally get to the sun shiny, warmer than frosty beach spot where there's a signal to make FACETIME work. But. Only for a few minutes before the wind picks up and the video signal crawls to a stand-still. That meant we need to drive somewhere else; a few miles in the other direction. A big parking lot surrounded with commerce sends the bars to full-on. Between the painted stripes I'm finally able to finish our conversation. By that time? My brand of SARAN is thinning. The pretending to be 'cool' about not being closer to my family is not holding up very well. Yup, my tongue is as awkward as the eight-year old I was who dived into a closet piled with clothes to hide from company. (But oh how I really did want that company ... )

The mid-wife left a pool. She wants to use it for the birthing. A handful of kids in their neighborhood have been birthed by this mid-wife. My son is leaving for a week of work on another island. FACETIME allows us to see what they're doing in the backyard. I see the fully stocked freezer, prepared for when Little Frog arrives and there's less time to cook. 

"I love her and it’s a secret. I love her so much it kills me, and you bet I’d sooner die than tell her."

That's the teaser line from the article "My Mom" filled with a story I can taste as easily as the slices of kimbap (Korean sushi roll) described in Mary H.K. Choi's confessional. Yup, I'm fiercely in love with my only son, and so awkwardly incapable of being smooth and comfortable expressing my feelings 'with my mouth.' I'm trying to do the 'telling' through writing. 

More astrology eases my emotional contortions. "What is it we want? Have we decided? Are we proactive or just reacting from habit or trauma? You’ll know by how it feels as you move forward. It can help to bounce your feelings off someone who knows you well, someone who knows and can remind you who you are. If you don’t have that with someone, that is also information. Maybe having THAT is what you need. Now you can decide to seek that person, or pay someone to perform that role."

I'm a first-time tutu to be. I'm far away, and getting closer is what I want, and we've started talking about how to change that. There are details and bigger pictures to sort. Magic and details. Can both be lived at the same time?  My friend Jude said she's found both -- magic and details -- work best together. We're mothers of a single son, I like to believe she and I are on to something having lived a few decades as mothers.

Mothering is an instinct. And a practice. It can be learned. I'm counting on that. 

What do you know about mothering?

I highly recommend reading "My Mom" by H.K. Choi. Her young, disclosing and very Korean voice was comforting and hilariously real to me. I miss that in my everyday relating. A kind of sister knowing that eased or forgave my own shameful feeling about my own Ma, making room to be compassionate about my tongue-tied love. 

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