A Mother's day Meditation

Mother's Day has history.  In the days when young girls were in service in big houses, they were given a cake and a day off to go and visit their mothers for the day.  It has another bit of history which is that it is about 9 months before Christmas and therefore it connects to that particular and special birth and to that particular and special mother.

My recollection of seeing my first child and experiencing the immediate love for that particular child was knowing that every mother felt this love for her child, it was as natural as spring coming every year.  Watching a daughter become a mother, you see the whole of love in action possessing those joined together by nature completely.

love is freely available and plentiful as oxygen.

Mum's get recognition and thanks for being Mums on Mother's Day but perhaps we Mums should be thinking of the gift of love we felt when we became mothers and how huge that love is and that we tap into it, we don't own it.  Here is a poem from one of Alexander McCall Smith's characters as a Mothers Day gift to my children and any other person reading this today.  This is from The Revolving Door of Life (the 44 Scotland Street Series) and it is the second verse of  the painter, Angus Lordie's poem at the end of

the book.   It is also a thank you to all those who have loved enough to work in the National Health Service to do all they can to bring well-being to people.  Of course particularly this week, the response of the doctors and medical staff from St Thomas's Hospital and in our case, those who have looked after my own Mary and her baby for so many months, in and out of the spaceship and now home and healthy.

The remarkable thing about love

Is that it is freely available,

Is as plentiful oxygen

Is as joyous as a burn in spate

And need never run out

And yet for all its plenitude

We ration it so strictly and forget

Its curative properties, its subtle 

Ability to make the soul-injured

Whole again, to make the lonely

Somehow assured that their solitude

Will not last forever; its promise

That if we open our heart

It is joy and resolution

   That will march triumphant

     Through the gates we create.