Meditations on my Mama and her influence...

Missing my Mom today as she sits in Guyana unable to travel and waiting out this pandemic.

I woke up a little melancholy today, reflecting on her selflessness, the extreme hard times of my upbringing including how, more than once, she tied a rag around her belly to camouflage hunger pangs when there wasn't enough of the leftover dog food from her bank manager boss brought home for our dinner, to go around to her plate.

No this isn't a pity party or cry for sympathy. It is a celebration of a glorious woman whose indomitable spirit, joie de vivre, and relentless belief in better days ahead infuse my DNA! because of her I can.

A woman with pre-high school education whose sexist father would tell her that he didn't have money to waste on educating girls - he is lucky I came along after he had passed on. Mom would place a premium on education herself, you were going to take a class on the morning of your funeral---and I often wonder who she'd be if not so greviously deprived of a chance to realize her potential.

Growing up the order of operations to start our day was prayer, repeating an affirmation, immersion in poetry. She loved the classics. And we had to commit them to memory and recite, not read from a book, thank you very much. My brother Nigel loves to raise up the following excerpt from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ladder of St. Augustine which we found invigorating: “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained in sudden flight but, they while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night.”

Mom was my first blueprint for leading by example, and I am grateful to have inherited her sticktoitiveness, optimism and can-do attitude. Today we relish the chance to repay her boundless dedication and sacrifice, and, as we remind the next generation, if we THINK she needs something, she gets it.

Mom, it is such a privilege to be your daughter and I celebrate you today, and every day. I pray God tarries in summoning you to the great beyond - we still have accomplishments in the making that we want and need to celebrate with you. Still want to do so much more for you, and to hear more stories and be inspired.

In the photo of Mom taken circa the mid-eighties she was in her mid-forties. She grasps an enormous pumpkin reaped from her garden. Isn't she a doll? Today my mother is 84 years young. And still renowned in the village for her green thumb and ability to resuscitate plants, to bring them back from the brink of expiration. What a woman, what a life. Happy Mother's Day my sunshine, my encourager, my life-giver.