immortality

papillon214 by valérie kuki 13637978174_2999e0a3f0_o.jpg

Of Gifts, Witnessing and Time Immemorial …

Each of our daughters has provided me a unique gift with the presence of their lives in mine. Our eldest, a twenty-six year old senior law student exemplifies the epitome of loyalty.

That she chose to move back home and resume living in her old room while attending

law school touched me greatly. It gave me the invaluable

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Of Being Needed, Appreciation and Matilda …

“I don’t need you. You need me. … I’m the mother. You’re the child.”

My mother’s statement to men when I was around ten or eleven years old echoed those of Danny DaVito, who played the father of the character, Matilda, played by Mara Wilson in the movie, Matilda.

“I’m big, you’re small. I’m strong, you’re weak. You need me. I don’t need you.”

My mothers’s words hurt.

Not until now

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Of History, Bloodlines and Memory …

Historically women and mothers have been and encouraged their daughters to live guarded lives. By guarded lives I mean not allowing love to determine the best husband, showing care with whom we associated, not allowing ourselves to find ourselves alone with men to whom we were not betrothed or married.

My mother exhibited similar actions with me. And I confess to doing the same with out daughters. These actions, though

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Of Mothers, Daughters and Pomegranate Seeds…

The Greek myth of Persephone centers on the relationship between Persephone and her mother, Demeter.

Demeter loved her daughter, Persephone very much. 

The story goes that the Greek God, Apollo, fathered Persephone by Demeter, Apollo’s sister.

When Persephone goes missing Demeter, quite distraught, searches every hill and valley to find her daughter and only child.

One can only imagine the multitude of emotions that flowed through Demeter.

The goddess of harvest and motherhood, marriage and the crone stage of female wisdom that comes with aging, Demeter led a life of holding her own amid her brothers Apollo (Zeus), Poseidon (Neptune), and Hades (Pluto).

Both Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stand at the center of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Initiation into the cult of Demeter and Persephone was said to prepare the participant to receive goodness and bounty in the afterlife that followed death.

Other beliefs held that those who underwent initiation would

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