Forgiveness, the key to love

If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.

- Mother Theresa

To my mom: I love you and appreciate your forgiveness, understanding, love, and support more than words can express.

And here ends the month of Mothers. Onto fathers just to be fair.

(5/30) Selective ignorance in parenting

Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze. 

-Keillor Garrison

5/29 Reluctance

I almost don't want to post one in respect to this day because it was the worst night of my life. But, it's dumb to just skip a day.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way - Barbara Bush

A special birthday dedication

This post is in honor of my aunt Tricia Pierce, who on this fateful day 19 years ago birthed the ridiculous, beautiful, amazing, funny, spirited, brilliant and wonderful girl who is my favooorite female cousin Hannah Kate Pierce. Happy birthday my love. May this year bring you a million beautiful surprises. And because you said you liked it...

May you have warm words on a cool evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door.

- Irish Toast

Hannah: 18, Mariah: 19 (in spite of the fact that I look 12.)

(This is my clever ploy to force you to read my blog Hannah Pierce bahahha. I love you.)

Some mother's just can't let go...

I found this video on Youtube today. I was creeped out. Maybe you will be, maybe not. But I will share anyway.

Breastfeeding...at age 8.

For 5/26 Cyanide and Happiness

Funny tumblr about parenting

Shit my kids ruined:

http://shitmykidsruined.tumblr.com/

Seriously hilarious.

Some shit I ruined as a kid:
- made a hole in the wall by slamming the door OPEN
- broke a small cabinet door by leaning on it one too many times
- broke the wheel off a spinny chair by leaning back on it
- blew up a plate in the microwave
- etc etc lol

Yo Mama Jokes

White Chicks Yo Mama Battle

Is your mama a llama?

His is.

Sorry for the inane post, expect more to come unfortunately. I'm exhausted, overworked, underpaid, and overwhelmed as of late. But appreciate that adorable little llama.

I am my mother's daughter

The following is an excerpt from the film Spanglish in which a young immigrant girl (who quickly becomes Americanized) is writing to a college admissions board about an experience that defined her life, namely hers and her mother's first year in the US. While spending the first year being taken under a white family's wing, she realizes in the end that she need not be anything more than she already was -- her mother's daughter.

"I've been overwhelmed by your encouragement to apply to your university and your list of scholarships available to me. Though, as I hope this essay shows, your acceptance, while it would thrill me, will not define me. My identity rests firmly and happily on one fact: I am my mother's daughter.

Thank you, Cristina Moreno"

MADD

We should all really be against drunk driving I think. But MADD makes it their business to publicize and educate. I haven't heard much about them since I was in elementary school, but I figure I should give them a shout out.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving http://www.madd.org/About-Us.aspx

Even Big Boi has a mama

"You are your only limitation."

- Advice from Big Boi (of Outkast)'s mother Rowena Patton

Don't Play Games with Heads or Hearts

I'm borrowing these bits of motherly advice from a blog I follow called THIS IS ME, DAMN IT! written by Stacey Chambers. You should follow it too.

"Advice to my daughter(s)…


Just say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't expect someone to read your mind,and don't play games with heads or hearts. Don't tell half truths and expect trust when the full truth comes out. Half truths are no better then lies. Don't be cold to someone you care about - indifference hurts more then angry words.


If you are angry - say it! Give the other person the opportunity to explain or make a change for the better. They can't do that unless they know why you're angry. In the same vein - if you care about someone say that too.


When you fall in love - love with your whole heart - and expect the same in return. Realize you deserve that - more than anything. Don't expect to change someone to make them love you - it won't work and love after all is completely out of your hands.


Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different."

Awkward Family Photos

Okay, I've been one of AFP's biggest fans since its inception. Here is a recent entry that fits well with this month....Hilariousss. AFP

Spice Girlsss

Why? Because the Spice Girls played the soundtrack of my formative years

Mama
by Spice Girls

She used to be my only enemy and never let me be free

Catching me in places that I knew I shouldn't be
Every other day, I crossed the line, I didn't mean to be so bad
I never thought you would become the friend I never had

Back then, I didn't know why, why you were misunderstood
So now, I see through your eyes, all that you did was love
Mama, I love you, Mama, I care,
Mama, I love you, Mama, my friend
My friend
I didn't want to hear it then, but I'm not ashamed to say it now,
Every little thing you said and did was right for me
I had a lot of time to think about, about the way I used to be
Never had a sense of my responsibility

Back then, I didn't know why, why you were misunderstood
So now, I see through your eyes, all that you did was love
Mama, I love you, Mama, I care,
Mama, I love you, Mama, my friend
My friend, you're my friend

But now, I'm sure I know why, why you were misunderstood
So now, I see through your eyes, all I can give you is love
Mama, I love you, Mama, I care,
Mama, I love you, Mama, my friend

Mama, I love you, Mama, I care
Mama, I love you, Mama, my friend
You're my friend, you're my friend

(Whoa whoa whoa whoa, Mama whoa whoa)

Mama, I love you, Mama, I care,
Mama, I love you, Mama, my friend


Listen to the song here

(For 5/16) Kissing and scolding

Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.

- Pearl S. buck

(For 5/15) Paradoxical and tragic

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.

- Erich Fromm

(For 5/14) Divine Animal Right

Lord am I behind. This is a quote from a movie I love "Enough" which stars Jennifer Lopez. Before she is about to confront her abusive husband for the last time, she phones her best friend Ginny who gives her this reminder.

That as a mother...

"You have a divine animal right to protect your own life and the life of your offspring."

From a mother not quite ready to let go

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by Linda Pastan

When I taught you

at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Mama said there'd be days like this

My life has been a disaster lately. My mother tries to convince me that these things too shall pass. From another mother with this outlook...

Que Sera, Sera

by Doris Day in "The Man Who Knew too much"

When I was just a little girl,

I asked my mother 'What will I be?

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?'

Here's what she said to me:
"Que sera, sera,

whatever will be, will be

The future's not ours to see

Que sera, sera

What will be, will be."

(For 5/11) The tragedy of children

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

(For 5/10) Miscarriage?

I'm not sure if this is really about a miscarriage or about abortion, on the internet they say miscarriage, I always read it as abortion. Either way, it's a sad story.

the lost baby poem
by lucille clifton

the time i dropped your almost body down

down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned

you would have been born in winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car
we would have made the thin walk
over the genecy hill into the canada winds
to let you slip into a stranger's hands
if you were here i could tell you
these and some other things

and if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers wash over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller of seas
let black men call me stranger always
for your never named sake

I am my mother's novel

It's Mother's Day, so I wanted to post my favorite poem about mothers today. It seems fitting.

My Mother's Novel
by Marge Piercy

Married academic woman ten
years younger holding that microphone
like a bazooka, forgive
me that I do some number of things
that you fantasize but frame
impossible. Understand:
I am my mother's daughter,
a small woman of large longings.

Energy hurled through her
confined and fierce as in a wind
tunnel. Born to a mean
harried poverty crosshatched
by spidery fears and fitfully
lit by explosions
of politics, she married her way
at length into the solid workingclass:
a box of house, a car she could
not drive, a TV set kept turned
to the blare of football,
terrifying power tools, used wall
to wall carpeting protected
by scatter rugs.

Out of backyard posies
permitted to fringe
the proud hanky lawn
her imagination hummed
and made honey,
occassionally exploding
in mad queen swarms.

I am her only novel.
The plot is melodramatic,
hot lovers leap out of
thickets, it makes you cry
a lot, in between the revolutionary
heroics and making good
home-cooked soup.
Understand: I am my mother's
novel daughter: I
have my duty to perform.

(100th post by the way!)

(5/8) The link that joins you to the night

Woman to Child
by Judith Wright

You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swam the sliding continents.
All tiem lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape --
that mirrors still your sleeping shape
that nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;
yet though you dance in living light
I am the earth, I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.

A voice of regret

The Mother
by Gwendolyn Brooks


Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Blinded by hope

Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.

 ~Moorish Proverb

This downtown apartment sure makes me miss home

I'm looking at these studio apartments in downtown San Diego, so I thought this song fit well. Defnitelyy relate to this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmAi_qJoPbU

Don't Forget to Remember Me
by Carrie Underwood

18 years had come and gone

For momma they flew by
But for me they drug on and on
We were loading up that Chevy
Both tryin' not to cry
Momma kept on talking
Putting off good-bye
Then she took my hand and said
"Baby don't forget:

Before you hit the highway
You better stop for gas
And there's a 50 in the ashtray
In case you run short on cash
Here's a map and here's a Bible
If you ever lose your way
Just one more thing before you leave
Don't forget to remember me"

This downtown apartment sure makes me miss home
and those bills there on the counter
Keep telling me I'm on my own
And just like every Sunday I called momma up last night
And even when it's not, I tell her everything's all right

Before we hung up I said
"Hey momma, don't forget:
to tell my baby sister I'll see her in the fall
And tell me-maw that I miss her
Yeah, I should give her a call
And make sure you tell Daddy that I'm still his little girl
Yeah I still feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be
Don't forget to remember me"

In her daughter's eyes, she is a hero

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLS0Y40WwlA
(recording)

In My Daughter's Eyes

by Martina McBride

In my daughter's eyes I am a hero

I am strong and wise and I know no fear

But the truth is plain to see

She was sent to rescue me

I see who I wanna be

In my daughter's eyes

In my daughter's eyes everyone is equal

Darkness turns to light and the

world is at peace

This miracle God gave to me
gives me strength when I am weak
I find reason to believe

In my daughter's eyes

And when she wraps her hand

around my finger

It puts a smile in my heart

Everything becomes a little clearer

I realize what life is all about

It's hangin' on when your heart

has had enough

It's giving more when you feel like giving up

I've seen the light

It's in my daughter's eyes

In my daughter's eyes I can see the future

A reflection of who I am and what will be

Though she'll grow and someday leave

Maybe raise a family

When I'm gone I hope you see how happy

she made me

For I'll be there

In my daughter's eyes

In a world of unsurity, a constant.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world, a mother's love is not.

- James Joyce

May, a Month for Mothers

Mothers Day is May 9th, so I figured that I'd dedicate this month to motherhood.

A reminder of a mother's willingness to go without...or to eat the burnt piece.

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

 -Tenneva Jordan