YESTERDAY
Patsy Payne


Whatever the ultimate creation mythos...
However life defines its jewels...
If ever I could touch the divine...
It was here...
Swaddled in purple crocheted clothes in my arms.
Children come through us, not from us.
We go about life, looking for the preciousness of childhood, even when we are old.
Granny Lodie is holding him now, but I shall always hold him, unseen by all but me.
If wishes were horses, fools would ride.
The Mysteries of time are so enormous and my small cup holds so little...
But my tears can overflow the ocean.
First, it was we two, then we three, and we fed each other the bread and milk of life.
Goodnight sweet prince...
Now go and shine among the stars...
That all may see you... We give ourselves "family" to find a story...
To risk living...
To experience life.
We came to belong to him.
He captured us...
Like other timeless teachers, he came as a baby to us...
To show us pure love.
And I couldn't wait until he could talk to me.
I wanted to talk about things...
It is the dark night of the soul.
How can one, so close, so much a part of me, as a hand or a foot...
How can that one fly from me...
And me...
Survive?
I don't know.
The path is dark and unlighted.
Have I lost myself?
I was here...
I was there...
He was ever on my mind.
I do not know who I am.
It was only 3 months that I rocked him in these chairs.
And now, at lights out, I am empty...
Like the owls, calling mourning cries in funereal worship.
Mothers, we revere them...
Because they are the ones who model the ultimate creative act.
To mother is to act like the goddesses and gods who act out our stories.
You are closer to the experience of humanity.
In this primal act of mothering, gods and goddesses fall down in awe.
You have loved a being into life.
It is an unfolding path.
You will find that the bridge appears as you step out into the chasm of the deep.
Boldly, step out and love what was so bright and so brief, until that very love is so real that you never lie down alone.
The heroes and heroines that are known to us...
Were all common people.
They had a life experience that changed them.
These same commoners were transformed by that deep human experience...
Giving them access to the mystical of everyday life.
In making dinner, in walking around the block...
Whatever...
Life is UNCOMMON ever after.
I have no answers.
In all of life, the greatest truths are not found...
These unspeakable wisdoms find us...
Seize us...
I have stumbled up the beauty of life
It is the putting one foot in front of the other.
It is the practice of living that redeems our pain.
Whatever physical task or service consumes the hours of the day, it is these which reflect our mending of the world.
And somehow we go on mending
Stitching up the wounds with the love we learned from the children.
We know that all children are sacred
And so we mend and mend and mend
And the stars shine on.
Never forget the child who came to teach you about love.

© 2000 by Patsy Payne. All rights reserved.
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