Mother Earth's Daughter

I am the daughter of Mother Earth. Not metaphorically but literally. My mother is the closest entity to Earth in mother form that I have found. She gave birth naturally to six kids, lived in the middle of the woods, painted, sculpted, sat for hours on the deck watching the wildlife on the pond. She made all the bread in our house from scratch, pulling whole wheat flour from a ceramic tub. Our house, an A-frame that came in a do-it-yourself kit, was assembled while she was pregnant with her second child. Roughing it? That’s how she liked it.

But she had limits. She refused to raise six children in a two-room house with lofts without a dishwasher or a TV. Every time she got mad at our father, she would consult a wish list. This is how we got a VCR, a camcorder, our first color TV, a leather couch, and a Renault car. What a great trick. No more anger. Only delight.

Our house was usually a wreck. Eight and often ten people lived there. She kept the kitchen and the bathroom clean. Everything else was chaos. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she set a timer. When stuff was not collected by the house’s many inhabitants, she went through with large black plastic garbage bags and indiscriminately collected all the items and put them at the end of the driveway for the garbage truck. We learned to run fast.

Binoculars, records, and recorders - a baby grand piano. Modern ceramic art, sculptures, and paintings stacked in frames lined the floor. Everything was brown and highlighted with white and blue. Earthy.

Listening to the woods. Watching the Canadian geese migrate and show off their goslings. The Mallard ducks. The newts. The beaver. The Chickadees. The big dead tree on the opposite side of the great pond that the large birds would most enjoy. The deer walking calmly at dusk. The Spring peepers, so loud, it was hard to sleep.

This is her world. This is where she resides today, alone, in the great wood at 90 years old, carrying wood to heat her home.