Dios

"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children." - William Makepeace Thackeray

Sometimes I wish I could quanitfy the way I see things. The definition is always changing. Most times, thoug, it is like walking on a narrow causeway with time as an abyss on one side and insight's gaping maw on the other. The more I learn the more I know I need to learn. I am overwhelmed at this moment by the weight of knowing that my mother is fallible. Not only fallible, but incapable of taking care of herself. Nor am I capable of taking care of her. I have to watch her throw herself to the winds of fate and hope that she lands somewhere safe. I don't know what else to say.
With my mother's falliblity comes that old saw about the day I realized my parents weren't as smart or in control as I thought they were. It was a long time ago, but it seems like one of those lessons you learn over and over as you wait for your mother to come to her senses and she just...doesn't. She doesn't and you wonder what you'd do if she called in the middle of the night; her little ice floe in the middle of the ocean has shrunk once again from the vast, stable landscape it once was to something akin to the coffee-table; able to be rowed easily but also vulnerable to the slightest wave. How do you keep her from sinking?
As a mother, things my mother does make me think about the kind of mother I am. Wait. No--the kind of mother I seem. Does my daughter, at 7, think I have it all figured out? Probably. Will she think the same thing at 15, 23, 30--it's important to me that my daughter have a mother that has it together, and acts like it. It's important to me to show her a strong, postive role model that she can lean on--not one that leans back more than anything else. I am sure my mother never really thought about it that way. Maybe just thinking about it is a step in the right direction...