Mother’s Day is the loudest Hallmark holiday. We were all born of the egg of some woman. But, the holiday can be hard to celebrate if you have lost a parent or have had ups and downs in your relationship. These three poems contain love, hope, and compassion for the various ways you might feel about Mom.
In spring 2016, before heading off for a long road trip to the American west, I wrote this small rhyme as a dedication in a little book I gave my mother. I knew I would be away on Mother’s Day, so I intended to leave her with a smile before I hit the road.
Dear Favorite & Only Mom,
It is not yet Mother’s Day,
But still I had to say,
Very early and only today,
You have such a wonderful way!
I count my blessings
And am in luck,
YOU are my mother duck!
When I am not there, and you are blue,
Read this book, through & through.
I am stuck on you, just like glue.
When you are through,
You’ll know, I love you!
By Sabrina Hassanali
Kahlil Gibran’s book, The Prophet, has beautiful wisdom on the essentials in life. This poetic meditation for parents shares how to see children.
On Children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
By Kahlil Gibran
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Intergenerational trauma can be unwittingly carried from grandparents onto their children. The following poem I wrote after contemplating this Thich Nacht Hanh meditation on how to see a parent as a hurt child.
On Parents
People!
Parents are people too and
Full of imperfections, pimples, and pet peeves.
Punch through the core of all of that.
Pained parents push away their progeny through preparations they pour into the little pieces of their heart.
A parent’s problem,
And a child’s psychological punishments.
by Sabrina Hassanali
I want to sit on that tree platfom and contemplate chicks stuck on a mother duck like glue.
😀 Stuck on glue; ain’t it true? stuck on roots, entrenched as boots!
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