the mothers

Happy Mother's Day--to those honored and to those honoring mothers! Lots of mothers connected to this blog. MaMaMa, mother and grandmother, is the inspiration for it. She produced 3 mothers. And we three have put our hands producing mothers and potential mothers. And so the work continues!

In the memory vein, I was thinking about MeMe, MaMaMa's mother, for whom I have a fond attachment. Thinking about that attachment and the opposite relation to GaGa, daddy's mother, produced some atypical thoughts. Mother, Twinkie and I lived with MeMe and Daddy Doc during daddy's navy service years. And MeMe died in 1945--I was 8 and Twinkie was 5. So we did not have much time with MeMe and not so many clear memories. Yet, I feel great affection for MeMe. GaGa on the other hand outlived our childhood and our times with her were more in number yet still few and far apart. I have strong feelings of love for her and of being loved by her. From GaGa I felt reserve and a bit of criticism. But to be fair, I don't remember sitting in MeMe's lap or getting a hug from her. I remember her being very occupied with domestic activity (as was GaGa). And the only real clear memory (and maybe only from family stories) is how she broke Twinkie of thumb sucking by very firmly telling her to "take that thumb out of your mouth". Perhaps my love for MeMe came from expressions of mother's and Aunt Pud's great love of her. And we know that the distance we felt from GaGa was greatly the influenced by her rejection of mother as a wife for daddy.

Hmmm, I seem to have fallen into consideration of the sources of love! For each of my dear readers I think that my love of you is based on our individual relationships which we've forged together--which are unique, strong and very valuable to me.

Love, Gay