• Here I am, again. I changed the speed of my life. Instead of winding downward quickly and recklessly. I'm cascading down the smooth rocks into a beautiful lake of crystal waters. I'm singing songs, "Row, row, your boat gently down the stream..." and on we go. Through life's changing flows.

    Maybe a mother in this "day in age" says 'i love you' by texting you to see if you're alright. Maybe a mother texts to see if you haven't broken down in pain from the agony of a thousand stabs to the chest. Maybe, just maybe, a mother can only text such words because she doesn't want to hear the pain deep within your heart when you say, "I'm ... fine." Even though you mean to say, "I hurt so much my stomach is lurching, my heart is pounding. Both wanting a simple escape into numbness." She would hurt more than a thousand deaths to hear her little girl, her baby, in pain. I guess a mother, a mom, a mommy, a madre can only do so much to rescue you that you have to take the ropes and learn to ride all by yourself. Maybe, in any odd life, a mother is a guide trying to help but so scared that she's not good enough that she just gives up. Maybe... just maybe... a mother is human - just like us? And maybe we're all a little lost in this world of mayhem, stress, loneliness, and happiness. I can't describe life in one sum of a sentence, or in one paragraph - not even a book can sum up life. It's just one simple word life.

    A mother can't keep you from hurting eternally, she can't always come to the rescue. A mother can only do so much, she's just human. She can hold you and tell you how much she knows how you feel. She can take your ultrasound picture and put it in her office. She can call everyone when you talk for the first time. She can hold your hand to kindergarten. She can take your first grade school pictures and put them on the refridgerator. She can email everyone she knows when you've lost your first tooth. She can send pictures of your middle school school pictures. She can kiss your forehead when you get mono. She can hold you when you think you can't graduate. She can smile brightly and cry sweetly when you walk across stage and get your high school diploma. She can let every person she's ever talked to know that you just graduated from high school. She can show pictures of you in your cap and gown. She can hold all of her children sweetly and calmly with tears of joy knowing she has children she can smile at with every achievement. She can get grey hair. She can smile at her first grandchild. And she can know that somewhere in the long road that led her here she did something that made her children the smiling bunch in front of her. She can have tender hands that teach us the rough lessons in life and she can hold her head high and say, "Those are my babies and I love them."

    I find myself down in the lake, looking to the beautiful mountains and I whisper, "It's a safe heaven, in a moms arms. It's just as breathtaking and beautiful as winter mountains shining with poufs of snow and lake water glittering in a dim sunlight. It's more beautiful than life. It is because the arms of a mom are not just arms but a moms love - and a moms love is what gave you life."