She's getting better!

One of those things that makes a parent a parent is tending to an ill child. Now that my little one is finally getting better, I can write with more ease about all of this. It was a very scary feeling seeing my daughters face so hollowed out by this flu. I've never seen her look like that. And yes, this was her first flu. I'm so glad she's better. She nibbled on some toast and walked around today. It's almost like she regressed in her walking, a little. The same stiff legged walk she did about 4 months ago. She's starting to act like her old self and oddly her vocabulary has expanded in the transition. Maybe it was going to do that any way, but my goodness she's nameing everything and using two words, now. I'm amazed.

She lost some baby fat and looks older too, poor dear. I'm lucky I am able to be home and tend to her.

In honor of Mothers Day, I am posting this

CODE PINK ALERT. It's an amazing group reaching people and especially women, in the aim of Peace. Please check it out.

I've written several poems about mothers and mothers in times of war. I would like to share this poem. It was chosen for poem of the month for

Poets Against the War. Here it is:

Black birds fly against a stone gray sky


The day awakens
And still the birds call out

Blue gray is my room and the
Sleepy world begins to drive by.

I am at home, a mom of two children.
I sit here safe and relatively at peace.

Outside, a light frost has settled on my sleepy town.
How good it will feel, to numb that pain, to hide away and sleep.

It is two days later.
Two days of what could have been and now…

The mounting sorrows, the bitter realizations are going to set
People, slowly will start to realize what they have done and what they have missed

Good-bye to thoughts of peace and common sense
Tighten your waist belts and hope for the best.
Praise all that is Good, there are only 2 terms.

And what Good, if any, will come of this?
More wars.
More deaths.
More rich and poor divides.
More lies.

But upstairs, in deep sleep my two children lay.
Peaceful and lightly snoring.
I take comfort in their warmth, in their not knowing.

Yes, I fear the future…next 4 years. I think of 40 years and wonder,
What will be…

No lottery, no superman,
no nothing can bring back a 200 year old tree felled by human hand.
Nothing can bring back people lost in war.
Nothing can calm the pain of children lost to mothers.
Nothing can be the balm that soothes such grief.

And so, I type this weak and simple poem in hopes to calm my troubled soul.
And all in all, I can still hope and watch the black birds fly.