MOM Star North Star

Looking back over the past decades, it's clear that a) few of us could have imagined what's happening in the world as even faintly conceivable ~and~ b) there are potent powers-that-be that did foresee, laid the groundwork for & carried out the steps that brought us to our here & now.  And it feels like it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Part of me would love to be able to settle down with a hot cuppa & a long gab with Mom, but am actually way way way happier that she was spared this madness.  
 
These are the days when we so desperately need to hear the voices of olders who went through hells my generation only faintly knew, that younger ones can't imagine.  Alas, too many of my older friends aren't in regular daily contact with their children & other youngers.  The wisdom we need is too often tucked away in eldercare residences & senior lifestyle communities, not right down the hall or puttering around in the kitchen.

Am offering up thanks that Mom was just around the corner from my computer studio, just a shout downstairs, sitting in her big chair that Brenda describes as "in the Stickley style."  So grateful that I had the benefit of her breadth of life, the influence of her difficult years - turning 18 just before the Stock Market Crash of '29, losing her father earlier that year, braving the Depression, experiencing World War II - on my relatively untouched life.  

Mom is no longer with us, but all I gained from through because of her remains as my North Star guide.  

Thanks, Mom - in these dark days, I really need to hold extra hard to everything you offered, the deep wisdom you continue to share.  Especially the sure knowledge that no matter what happens, we can disagree with others, distrust & dislike them, repudiate their views, shun their presence & defend ourselves against them, but we cannot set out to increase their suffering, crush their spirit, denigrate their existence.  Not even when we loathe their political beliefs or fear their cultural ideology.  Hate what they stand for, but not them.

Mom - after all that's happened, all that's happening, all that lies ahead, that's a lot easier to say than to do.