Birthday Joy
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Enclosed here is a poem and a link (hopefully) in celebration of my 70th birthday. The address will take you to YouTube video of 80 happy people singing their hearts out in fun, plus the marvelous cake with cannoli rum filling and buttercream frosting with the little gypsy dancers on top. You can also see pics of the beautiful worship space of Unity Temple, the Frank Lloyd Wright church in which the party was held.
The poem is from Carolyn Aguila, a neighbor from many, many years ago in Chicago when we took in Kevin Price Sanchez and Kelly Price Jorgensen as foster children one winter. Carolyn has a wonderful published book of her own Chicago/family/literature based poems: “Flirting with Rhyme and Reason, EM Press, Channahon, IL 2006. YouTube: Marti’s 70th Birthday by Kevin Sanchez
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but all moms worry,
about all children,
all the time.
It’s always been so.
young boys and girls were sent
to uncles and aunts for fostering,
particularly when mothers grew tired
from the fretting.
Sometimes a family needs a rest from itself—
–or an urgent matter must be tended to
far from a child’s daily life.
until many years latter
that my own bricked city street
harbored such a mother
who mothered without question
the child of another,
a woman who understood
the sacred mission of tending to children
who were not her own,
but who were in need.
this type of generosity,
and it is passed on and between and among
the bones and blood of motherhood.
We are finer, brighter, and sturdier because of these mothers—
–and one is named, Marti.