At my desk, this spring day, I read these words
My Mother’s Other Life
Before we go out
to dinner or a movie,
after a long day…..
my mother would stop
in the middle of our rushing…
…and say,
calmly, just a second,
sitting down on a black-cushioned,
straight-backed chair placed
beside the door solely
for that purpose: to rest
briefly, to deeply breathe in
and out until her heart
slowed down and her face
calmed……
Philip Terman
And I listen to them, too. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/76392/my-mothers-other-life
Am I hearing my mother’s other life or my own other life?
Last night I finished reading Connon Girls ~ A Study of 20th Century New Zealand women at university, by Marie Peters.
Once that was my other life. I was a Connon Girl. Some fragments of my story are written within the text.
Do I miss my other life? Not really. It’s a good place to sit , for a while, but from my desk, this spring day, my life is present here ~ mostly.
For I am a mother, and for a mother there is always an other life. My daughter sings it.
I used to live in the future until I reached an age where I could see the door. Now because of circumstances, the present pretty much claims all of me. But the other day someone, who was always part of our delightful stays in California, called. She said how much she wished she could help us in our present struggles and I was suddenly aware of how many wonderful memories, in fact-even the smell of the ocean and its rhythmic heart beat came to me with the sound of her voice. I recognized what a gift that was and I hope she could hear what a treasure trove she was giving me.
I do agree, Eileen, that the present is a very time-consuming place. Yet it is lovely to connect with old memories, to bring those memories into our present. I am glad you and your friend were in touch. At the moment I have a heavy cold. I am treating myself with a hot lemon, honey, and whisky drink, which my father used to make for me when I was unwell. I am sure it is not so much the drink that helps but the memory of my father’s care which I associate with it.
Present moment is all we have. Or some theories say it is all our imagination? Past, present and future? Illusion? It feels that way sometimes. You have a great present moment, I don’t think you miss the past, or?
I do miss the past but I am content to be in the present. Although some days go by so quickly I wonder if they were an illusion, or if they really happened!
That the past would be just our memories leaves me in a strange philosophical quandary. If letting go of the past enables us to let go of the suffering, does that act mean letting go of lessons learned?
These are greater questions than I have brain for, but I am sure learned philosophers will have discussed these issues. I did some philosophy at University. I passed my exams; barely! 😀
Welcome back!!
Thank you, Kate.
It’s wonderful to see you back, Gallivanta xxxx
Thank you, Dianne. I think I am in spring revival mode. 😀
Beautiful. Welcome back.
Thank you, Alys. Your organizing side would be proud of me today. Not only have I restarted my blog life, but I have organized the linen cupboard. 😀
Well done, well done! You are on your game and it shows. I’m happy for you!
🙂 🙂 🙂 Next step, cleaning out the guest room wardrobe of accumulated ‘stuff’.
Ah, stuff. Be ruthless…you have my full permission to toss, recycle, up-cycle, donate or put back in use whatever you may find there. Please report back. 🙂
Will do……..eventually 😀
dearest Gallivanta
You are such a beautiful writer. Your words are filled with warmth, heart, poignancy. Thank you for your offerings. xxx
And thank you for taking the time to share in my world. Just out of curiosity, do you have a quiet space where you read and write blogs? I have a space but it’s not always quiet!
Mmm. Good question. Yes – mostly. My funny little studio/spare room, which is generally quiet. As I say that, a noisy plane passes overhead! Well, it’s relatively quiet for the inner west of a large city.
Also, I live with one other person only. That person is very respectful of people’s space. What is the not-quiet element of your space, I wonder?
That sounds fairly quiet (aircraft noise excepted). My main computer is in the open plan kitchen area. So most of the noise comes from extractor fan, dishwasher, oven, people etc; in the evening, the noise is just me on the computer, the ticking clock, and the fridge hum. It’s quite amazing how noisy a modern kitchen is!
I always admire people who are able to focus in an expansive daydreamy creative way in the midst of busyness, noise or distracting people activity. Not my forte. x
I wonder if there’s a little ditty or artwork about your humming, whirring kitchen.
Hmmm, no little ditty but I rather like this poem https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/when-i-am-kitchen
And, although I don’t mind the noise, I do prefer to dream, and to be creative without it!
Oops! Have to dash about and out the door. I look forward to more communications later. Love to you.
Hope the dash is over, and you’ve had time to retreat to your quiet space.
You have captured a serenity in your present moment. Now I can sit still more and just enjoy a breeze or a bird but the hectic life of being a working mother is still in my consciousness and more so as one of my daughters is just about to give birth and will need to go back to work too. I love your words about being a mother and always enlivened by our daughters lives and songs.
My working career was next to nil after marriage, so I was, and still am, in awe of mothers who work outside the home. I hope your daughter has good maternity leave conditions. Will this be a first grandchild for you?
Yes, it will and the expectancy is different!
🙂 🙂 All the best for the exciting event ahead.
Oh such a lovely post .. thank you so much for sharing. Your daughter has a beautiful voice .. I have missed you 🙂
Awww…..it’s nice to be missed. When I disappear for awhile I wonder if anyone will be waiting for me when I get back. 🙂 Sadly, one blog friend is no longer waiting. Did you follow Jeni, the Hopeful Herbalist? She died in June. 😦 I am glad you enjoyed my daughter’s voice.
It’s heart-wrenching when someone in this community passes. I’m sorry for your loss. It is nice to a post from you, and wonderful too that you stay connected to us, even when you aren’t posting yourself.
It is heart-wrenching. Bloggers are friends we communicate with so regularly that they become an integral part of our lives.
Exactly. Those of us who’ve been at this for awhile have experienced these losses first hand. It’s difficult.
Yep, but it’s good when partners, spouses, and/or children, keep the blogs open, so we can have a nostalgic visit, from time to time, to our departed friends.
I agree. I’ve gone to visit on occasion, too.
Oh I did follow her, I was so very sorry to hear the news, she was a lovely person ..
Indeed, she was. We were privileged to know her.
Great post; glad to have you back!
Thanks RR Does your little Princess, Zoey the Cool Cat, ever let on about her other lives? 😀
Your daughter has such a lovely voice.
It’s so important to take moments in the day to stop and breathe and to pause. Take notice of ourselves and what is around us. What are we rushing towards, really?
Enjoy the early days of Spring. Here it is starting to get cooler as Autumn approaches. The trees have one or two leaves that are turning. I am seeing fewer bees and butterflies.
Be well, my friend.
And the same greeting of wellness to you, Letizia. I hope you are getting all the rest you need. I have enjoyed reading your recent posts, and sharing them with my daughter. Enjoy the early days of autumn.
Your daughter has a lovely voice, Gallivanta!
So good to see you post again. Such beautiful words you present us with on a fine spring day in New Zealand!
Lavinia, I am happy you like my daughter’s voice. Appreciation from another singer is a great compliment. The song is a cover of a popular Korean pop song. My daughter arranged the lyrics from an English translation of the original lyrics. She is experimenting with different singing style. She is a classically trained singer.
You’re fortunate for someone of our age to have a mother still living.
The poem’s mention of breathing in and out deeply takes on a different resonance for me when I hike uphill here in the Canadian Rockies.
Not only a mother but a father too. That’s fortunate and a source of amazement to all the family. My parents didn’t really expect to live much past 70. When you are breathing deeply in the Canadian Rockies spare a breath to tell them I intend to visit one day. Are the Rockies as wonderful as I am led to believe?
Yes. As you know, we visited Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado on our trip three months ago. It was good, but the Canadian Rockies are better. Eve and I have been enchanted with all the mountains, lakes, and glaciers here. We do hope you’ll get a chance to see them too.
Good to hear the Canadian Rockies truly are enchanting.
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the Colorado Rockies this summer and the Canadian Rockies two years ago. Both are breathtaking, but the Canadian Rockies are in a field all their own. Stunning!
Fantastic. When I was about 11, I read a book about a family travelling in the Canadian Rockies over an extended period. I was hooked.
Isn’t it amazing how some books stay with us for a lifetime?
It is, which is why it’s so wonderful you are providing literary nourishment to the young ones of your neighbourhood. They will remember!
Thank you for that.
🙂
That’s why I liked talking the train across country more than a car. The train tracks bring us a lot closer to the mountains than the interstates do.
Train trips are a great way to travel, especially for someone like myself who isn’t a confident driver.
But as a photographer, the ability to stop wherever I want, move around as much as I want, and stay in a place as long as I need to, is paramount. A friend suggested we’d enjoy going on a cruise (I think not a week goes by that we don’t get a brochure in the mail), but that has the same limitations for photography.
Even as a non-photographer I would find a sea cruise limiting because I don’t do well on the sea. I am a landlubber through and through.
I’m with you. In 1985 I took a ferry across the English Channel, which isn’t a very broad body of water, and I still got queasy. I wished I hadn’t eaten anything before the crossing. But give me land and I’m happy to lub it.
Yes, lubberly, lubberly land.
I seem to remember Julie Andrews singing a song with that word in its refrain.
Perhaps Loverly? https://youtu.be/v5ipgrp_xLU
Correct. I figured lubberly was only one step farther from the right word than loverly.
As I listened to Julie Andrews the loverly began to sound like lubberly. I was amused.
Your post has left me unaccountably sad — tearful, even. Why that is, I’m not sure. You certainly have stirred into consciousness certain of my own other lives — stories that never will be written in these pages — but more likely, it’s only that most of us in my part of the world are a little raw since the storm: a little too aware of how quickly everything can change, and newly sensitive to all the ways that loss can come.
But you have spring, and we have hints of autumn. You have your daughter’s glorious singing, and we have the birds on their accustomed branches, singing as though a second spring has come. That’s a good enough life for the present, especially with the poet’s reminder that we’d do well to “rest briefly, to deeply breathe in and out” until our hearts slow.
Supposedly, one is not supposed to say I understand how you feel,or how so many are feeling in Houston right now. But I believe I do understand a great deal: that incredible loss; that life; that building; that home; all different. As we said here after the earthquakes, there is a new normal. And although there is a frantic desire to rush about trying to put things to rights, sometimes it pays to just rest, and restore our hearts first. I think your photos and observations belonged to that calming space. And I was so taken with My Mother’s Other Life that I have put a chair back in the hallway. A contemplation chair. I had one there for several years and then decided to move it. That was a wrong move. 😀
That is a lovely Nectarine blooming.
YC the flowers themselves look delicious enough to eat! 🙂
How lovely to be able to hear your daughter’s voice! This is real progress I think.
I had another life before I had my daughters but it seems so long ago and far away. I am the same person I was then but I have so many different layers now and have experienced so much. I love your beautiful nectarine tree!
Clare, this small progress is so precious and so fragile, like the blossom on the nectarine tree. Fingers crossed it will bear fruit. 🙂 The layers make us who we are, but sometimes they weigh heavy like a too hot sweater on a summer’s day. It would be nice to be able to rip them off, sometimes. 😉
Beautifully put! 🙂
Thank you, Clare. I hope your daughters are doing well.
Thank-you! Yes, there is definite improvement in both their lives.
I am so glad to hear it.
🙂
Lovely to have your thoughts return to print. You’ve created a tribute to the individual and to motherhood. We are the sum total of all the parts and those parts evolve with a vengeance. The sun shines and dissolves into another day, and we add another layer. Even though the past has brought us here, we live in the present.
So true, Sally. And I am glad we evolve. How boring it would be if I were exactly the same person of my university days.
Hooray! You did! 🙂 🙂 It must have been strange reading about ‘your’ life, but what a lovely trip down Memory Lane. I’m so glad things are finally calm enough for you to post again. Hugs, darlin!
Yes, I did it. I can’t quite believe it. And I can’t quite believe I said some of things which are quoted in the book, but I must have. 😀
🙂 🙂
First of all, your daughter has a beautiful voice! I liked your mentioning that you are here in the present…mostly. 🙂
Thank you, April. Yes, I do live in the present….mostly, but music does make my mind wander sometimes. Nursery rhymes, for example, take me way back. And songs like this take me back to my first years of marriage and life in Botswana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOuI4OqJfQc Do you have songs or music like that?
Love Grover Washington! I do have songs that take me to places in my life that were good times. The moments I felt strong and invincible–which now I see was actually mania. Good songs nonetheless.
That’s an interesting insight, but, as you say, it doesn’t detract from the songs.
You’re back with a flourish–a poignant, lovely flourish. You make me think about my “other life,” or lives . . . Regrets, I have a few but, then again, too few to mention . . .
Yes, there are bound to be regrets, a few, just a few. 🙂 All in all, I am sure, when we add up l the different sides of our lives, we come up with a wondrous whole. Oops, I nearly wrote ‘hole’ instead of ‘whole”.. There will be some of those holes as well. 😀
Welcome back, dearest friend! A beautiful post that went straight to my heart. And that voice…♥ There is much love and warmth in your post, but also sadness in the middle of your lovely spring picture. Enjoy your spring all the way.
Thanks Anne Christine. I guess it’s a sadness tempered by joy because you know how happy I am to have my daughter singing again. 🙂
💖
welcome back, Lady-G… been missin’ you here! 🙂 lovely and emotional post, written with the “feather” of your heart… ❤
It was wonderful to sit at my desk today, and be able to put my thoughts into a post. Written with the feather of my heart…..I like that!
Beautiful and very moving xxx
Thank you, Liz. And I must say, seeing the beautiful view at your holiday spot filled my heart with a sighing for a missing part of me. I am sure our genetic make up doesn’t forget the landscapes which formed it in the way back time.
Totally agree – it feels so elemental, so necessary and so completing to be close to the earth and nature like this.
Like a dog, rolling on the warm grass, for the sheer squirmy pleasure of it. 🙂
Love it! ❤️
😀 😀
That’s alovely post and some beautiful singing! Glad to see you writing again, too ❤
I hope my blogging energy is here to stay. 🙂 Lovely to have your comment, Nath. I miss our conversations on your blog but I know it was necessary to change and develop your blog. I loved your swimsuit post; the swimsuits look so comfortable and stylish.
We can always have a chat here, eh? 😊 That’s so nice of you to say, thank you. I’m super happy that you keep reading, even though all you can do as a reader is like the posts in the WP reader. 🙈But I so needed a break from all those senseless plugs and folks promoting the hell out of their stuff using my comment section and getting angry if their comments got blocked. I’m enjoying the quiet, but still missing the interaction. Hope you have a wonderful Spring!
Ugh, how ghastly. Enjoy the quiet, and I sure will enjoy Spring. I am so glad winter is over.
And somewhere in Berlin someone is glad Summer is over.
The bugs have bugged me to the degree of us getting a full-blown mosquito tent for our bedroom! 😀
Oh Lol. That’s drastic. But I approve of mosquito tents. Spent much of my life under them.
Thanks for nothing, WordPress. I only JUST saw this comment 😴 Sending love 💚
Did I get sent to Spamland? Wondering now if you got my email??
No; your comment just didn’t APPEAR in my “New comments” section 🤷🏻♀️
No mail either, though 😱
Oh dang…… the email just said how much I loved your outfits, especially the all red ensemble which I would have been happy to wear once upon a time https://beautycalypse.com/2017/09/18/fall-winter-2017-18-fashion-trends/
And just searching for that link, I see that none of your recent posts have appeared in my reader! Another dang it.
WordPress are tinkering, I suppose. Comments appear with a huge delay, and posts don’t show up. Very weird indeed.
Such a touching post, Ann. So many facets.
Thank you, Tish. Sometimes there is so much to say, it’s impossible to say it all with words. 🙂
Yes. That came through the screen and into my heart 🙂
🙂 I don’t want to keep you here all day but I noticed you had commented on Sally’s lensandpens. I don’t really recall John Berger but I found some of the words in the New Yorker obituary very pertinent to some of the unwritten ideas in my post eg ” In the print companion to the series, Berger stresses that visual art is a way of reckoning with entropy and loss. “Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent,” he writes. When we are separated from the people and things that we love—whether by oceans or by years—works of art testify to both their enduring gravity and their distance from us. Those works also generate new kinds of proximity.”
You can keep me as long as you like 🙂 He was an utterly wonderful thinker. An activist too, and the words you quote reach right to the roots of us, don’t they. This is the first of Ways of Seeing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
Thank you for the link. I am watching, or should I say seeing? 😉
Episode 4 is my favourite – total eye-opener. He wrote novels too. You’ve reminded me that I meant to seek one out. I got side-tracked by Georges Simenon and his West African ‘Tropic Moon’ novella, which then led me to another…
I haven’t read any Simenon since I was obliged to in French class. But he came to my attention again recently with the screening of the Maigret series starring Rowan Atkinson. Tropic Moon sounds very noir. Glad to know about Episode 4
Yes that new Maigret series is on our ‘to watch’ list, though loved the Michael Gambon series, which was also on YouTube. I’d put Tropic Moon alongside Heart of Darkness for insight and historical importance re white men mucking around in Africa. Also some wonderfully spare writing. The tropical heat is almost overwhelming.
Not sure I have seen the Michael Gambon series so that can go on my ‘to watch’ list. And when I am feeling in a strong state of heart, I may tackle Tropic Moon. Or feeling in need of some tropical heat. 😀
What a lovely post, glad you enjoying Spring, with this beautiful blooming tree, I can see Jam coming up after harvest! Enjoy your Spring to the full!
I have seen the bees busy around the blossom so I am hoping for a good harvest. 🙂
That is good to know! Keep them busy in your lovely garden. 🙂
I will. There will be lots of other lovely blossom soon enough.
Super, let the bees enjoy it and you enjoy it equally!
We’ll be sure to share.
Your daughter’s song makes me feel sad. Her voice is beautiful – her emotions are raw. Her refrain of ‘I miss you’ is unceasing. Our daughters are always so closely entwined with us, no matter how old they are or how separated we are by distance and life style. I do not know if that is ‘other’ it is certainly ‘part of who we are’.
It’s 6 years since my daughter left home. 7 years since the Sept earthquake which rattled our world. We bear the pain still, though, for me, it is no longer raw, unless I dwell on it too long. And, Pauline, perhaps you are right about ‘other’……. our lives are more integrated, or ‘entwined’ as you say.
It’s so hard to believe that 7 years has passed and yet for so many still unresolved! The world has changed has it not? After I left my comment last night I began to think of our lives as rivers – always moving, always changing, sometimes turbulent, sometimes peaceful – the molecules of water never at rest, but always the same river…………
So much unresolved indeed. I heard that the Anglican Church will be making a decision on the Cathedral this weekend; let’s hope it is something definitive. Our lives as rivers……a lovely concept especially if I think of our incredible braided rivers in the South Island. In NZ’s case we might have to add pollution to the list but that fits with life too. We have toxic parts too.
I’m so anxious to step foot in your beautiful country.
And New Zealand can’t wait to welcome you!
xo Thank you.
“For a mother there is always another life.” How true. Lovely post, especially your daughter’s beautiful singing.
Thanks Su Leslie. I am glad you enjoyed my daughter’s singing. During my young years, from about 12 to 20, I lived away from home for my education. I was homesick at times. I saw my family about twice a year. How hard it must have been for my mother. Mothers and daughters adjust to these situations but no adjustments ever truly compensate for the loss of touch which occurs during long periods of absence.
My mother in law and her younger sister went to boarding school in Dunedin (from the family farm near Gore), at probably around the same age. M-in-L then stayed on to study at Otago. Both women missed their mother badly, and it must have been terrible for her too. They were her youngest children and she was a widow. My mother and I have lived in different countries for most of my adult life and I miss her every day.
Ditto for my mother and I, and my mother and her mother; the hardest part is when the mother gets older or ill, and the daughter can’t be close by. My mother has mild dementia, and sometimes I am sure she doesn’t really know who I am when I phone. Skype conversations are much easier.
My mother is nearly 81 and in reasonbly good health, but every day that passes increases my anxiety. My brother and his family live close to her, but it’s not the same.
Definitely not the same. 😦
Sounds very interesting! Life is always good in the springtime! ❤
Mrs P, there’s nothing better than a spring day to put a smile on one’s face. Do hope you won’t be too affected by Irma.
She’s a fickle one…can’t seem to make up her mind and is leaving us guessing…we’re prepared for anything.
I am glad to hear of your preparedness. It looks this storm may well be a monster.
Such a beautiful post, my friend. Past, present, hint of future. Loving and living and mothering. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for listening, Cynthia, and for including me in your story. You are an important part of my unwritten story. 🙂
Thank you.
Uncommonly interesting women with fascinating lives and stories, like you.
Do you see your life as past, present and future?
I don’t.
The older I get I see my life phases as all muddled up, none separate from the other, an ongoing somewhat messy narrative….. hopefully with a bit better plot than opera! (smile)
Such an interesting question, Cindy. I don’t think about the future too often, but I think all the phases do appear to me as a continuum. As you say, a very messy one, most of the time. As for opera, those plots, in their general madness, are closer to life than I want to believe! Big Smile.
Love back to you~
🙂
Now I’m wondering if all those SF/F plots about time travel are nonsense because the past and future have no physical existence.
Oh dear, please don’t tell me Star Trek may be nonsense! 🙂 By the way, I was wondering if you ever got my comments on some of your posts about 6 or so weeks ago. I stopped commenting because I wasn’t sure if my comments were reaching you.
Do you mean posts on my own website? I didn’t know I had any. I will go look because I was beginning to wonder. Thanks
Yes. Please check because it keeps telling me my comments are awaiting moderation.