Mother, remember.

Mother, remember.
The other night, we went to see Iron & Wine at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. First of all, he has my exact same Taylor, but makes it sound way better than I can even imagine making it sound. Good/sad times. Second of all, I actually teared up during one song. This guy is such a phenomenal song writer. Also, I was rapidly approaching the Girly Time Of Hormones And All The Crying. Incidentally, NPR also made me a little weepy earlier that day.



He started singing a song I'd never heard before, because I didn't have The Creek Drank The Cradle. The song is "Upward Over the Mountain."

mother don't worry, i killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed
mother don't worry, i've got some money i save for the weekend
mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me?
mother remember the blink of an eye when i breathed through your body?

so may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
sons are like birds flying upward over the mountain

mother i made it up from the bruise of a floor of this prison
mother i lost it, all of the fear of the lord i was given
mother forget me now that the creek drank the cradle you sang to
mother forgive me, i sold your car for the shoes that i gave you

so may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
sons are like birds flying upward over the mountain

mother don't worry, i've got a coat & some friends on the corner
mother don't worry, she's got a garden we're planting together
mother remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry?
blood on the floor & the fleas on their paws
and you cried 'til the morning

so may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten
sons are like birds flying upward over the mountain

I bought the CD that night and have since been haunted by the song, which really means I keep pressing repeat and can't stop thinking about it and talking to my friends about motherhood and the beautiful part with the pups in the pantry.

I see a son's relationship with a mother that may be fragmented, at best. "Mother remember the blink of an eye when i breathed through your body." It's something that no amount of functional familial relationships or phone-call-ending "I love you"s could ever dream of showing a mother. Deep appreciation soars between the adult and his mother, the once-fetus and the womb. I realized that I don't think about pregnancy through the mind of myself as a baby inside my mother. I have never stopped to think of my relationship with my mother as that of a woman quietly listening to the heartbeat through the stretched skin of her belly, wondering what I was, how difficult I would be, who I would look like, who I would become.

My breath caught thinking about it, and thinking about how a mother could never, ever stop remembering her children in her womb. When they grow up and bring girls home or move out and then maybe she doesn't ever get to see the girls they're bringing home and they make rash decisions or she gets the police knocking at her door at 2am looking for her son, she grew that person inside her body and that detail never goes away.

And then the guitar breaks down to almost-silence and he very quietly sings "Mother remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry?" and there I am watching a private moment many years ago, a moment of huge joy and fear and excitement. And the little boy remembers his mother crying and the little puppy paws. And that is nothing short of beautiful.

I may have spent much my life forgetting who raised me, who cultivated my very life with their own, who taught me love and compassion and crying, but if, for one moment I remember this as an adult, as someone who will be a parent of her own some day -- if I realize that many years ago I shared the same blood and the same breath as my mother, then none of the forsaking and forgetting matters. That realization amidst the fleetingness of a child trumps any fathomable concept of gratitude.

"So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten, sons are like birds flying upward over the mountain."