To help celebrate this Mother's Day, I have collected some reflections that I hope you enjoy:

 The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family leftovers. The original meal has never been found. -- Calvin Trillin

A mother is a woman who has taken on an extra life. She'll be two people in one skin for the rest of her life. -- Pam Brown

"You are the caretaker of the generations, you are the birthgiver," the Sun told the woman. "You will be the carrier of this universe." --Brule Sioux, Sun Creation Myth

"Don't negotiate with terrorists," cautions her father when she yodels to be picked up. Absolutely right, of course. But when he's left the room, I find myself moving toward her, drawn by that irrestible beat. -- Alison Pearson

I love it when mothers get so mad they can't remember your name. "Come here, Roy, er, Rupert, er, Rutabaga... What is your name, boy?! And don't lie to me, because you live here, and I'll find out who you are." -- Bill Cosby

In the wake of every evil inflicted by man or nature come the women, gathering what can be salvaged, the distraught and injured children, the lost, the dispossessed, the fragents of a broken society. They tear at blocks of stone tumbled by earthquake, blackened by fire. The build among the olive trees or the desert sand. Out of the destruction they piece together small areas of safety, a home... Strong, beautiful, happy and successful as her children may be, somewhere in the inner darkness of a woman's mind lie the recollections of those others, the children blown away like a flurry of leaves by sickness, sorrow and devilry. To have a child is to giver her a share in every child, and she mourns them as her own. -- Pam Brown

The most powerful ties are the ones to the people who gave birth to us... it hardly seems to matter how many years have passed, how many betrayals, how much misery in the family; we remain connected, even against our wills. -- Anthony Brandt

As truly as God is our father, so just as truly is he our mother. In our father, God Almighty, we have our being; in our merciful mother we are remade and restored. -- Julian of Norwich

A Favorite Poem about Mothers:

I Am Becoming My Mother

Yellow/brown woman
fingers smelling always of onions

My mother raises rare blooms
and waters them with tea
her birth waters sang like rivers
my mother is now me

My mother had a linen dress
the colour of the sky
and stored lace and damask
tablecloths
to pull shame out of her eye.

I am becoming my mother
brown/yellow woman
fingers smelling always of onions.

-- Lorna Goodison (b. 1947)
 

Dear Little One,
You have paved in me a road of remembrances
Of rocks you named on the way home
Of trees and shops and houses 
We had to visit each day
When you were two and three
Along our journey.
Now you don't recall the urgency of
The Pink Church
Or the Brown House
Or the statue of the poet by the bay.
Your eyes do not seek them anymore;
They have moved on.
But these will remain magical totems
And sacred signposts in my sight
And in my heart
All the rest of my days.
--Carole Hallundbaek

Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
-- Luke 2:19

_images:

_{Mother Love, by Kolongi;
Mary Cassatt}