The Mother of Extraordinary

I wouldn't have
known how, or where,
to even beGIN to begin,
had I simply been blessed
with the perfectly
ordinary children
I had prayed for,
and expected.

I AM:
the ordinary woman
you won't see.
I'll never stand out
in (most) crowds.
Mine is the perpetually
(ever so slightly) familiar face
that you can ALMOST place,
that you suspect knows You, and
maybe even more ABOUT you,
than she does.

I AM, through no deed of my own: 
the MOTHER of Extraordinary.

Extraordinary
will entertain you,
question you,
challenge you, test you,
bring out your best, and
bring out your worst.
At some point,
Extraordinary
will surpass you.
And one day,
one day soon,
if you are as I am, the lowly
Mother of Extraordinary,
Extraordinary will leave you,
and go forth to challenge
the World in the manner
it first challenged YOU.

I AM: the Mother of
Extraordinary.
I carried, and pulled, and pushed,
and played, and painted, and
chased after, talked and listened,
sang, read, and prayed.
I AM: grateful and blessed,
and very, very tired.

Time passes at the same steady pace
that it has since its first Dawn,
yet always too swiftly, too soon, for us.

If by grace and
good fortune,
you chance to  meet
Extraordinary,
don't look away. 
Extraordinary can change the World,
And Extraordinary can change YOU.

Seventeendipity

Seventeen years later,
I am wide awake.
I couldn't sleep that night, either.
I watched my husband sleep, restlessly, on the sofa, while I dutifully kept a meticulously accurate, if barely legible, record of frequency and duration of contractions, gentle squeezings that I would be aware of, but able to sleep through, with future births.

Young, so very young,
I woke him and we hurried
to the hospital...to wait.
The sun rose, and so began
essential, (land line)
phone calls, one at a time,
announcing that today,
January 13, 1996,
would be THE day.

Shortly after noon,
we found ourselves
forever changed-
Our One True Love
had become our
One True Family.

Seventeen years a mother,
a seventeen year adventure
filled with more laughter, pride,
love, and successes,
but also more failures,
than I had anticipated.

Learning, learning,
always learning,
believing that the job of
parents is to train
and prepare children
to become upstanding citizens,
competent, independent adults,
but not knowing how to prepare myself
For that inevitability.

Casting votes before swine

Little known fact about Me:
I once went very much out of my way to cast a vote in a local election I had no intention of participating in, and NO interest whatsoever in the candidates nor the outcome.  I did it because someone whom I've known, loved, and respected my entire life told me she was going to vote, and was calling other white people to tell them to be sure to vote, too, because a black candidate was running against the incumbent, a white man who had held this office for decades without any significant challengers.
I was SO shocked that, even minutes later, I couldn't remember exactly what my reply was, but I know that I did manage to verbalize (poorly, I'm sure) my profound opposition to this blatantly racist and unreasonable attitude.
And that's how I came to "get out the vote" for a man whose name and face I cannot remember, in an election I had NO interest in, that he had not a chance of winning in the first place.  I had the power to cancel out just ONE single vote that I knew was being cast out of ignorance, bigotry, hate, and/or fear, and I felt obligated to do so.
P.S.  The incumbent won anyway, as everybody knew he would.  Did I make a difference?  In that election, absolutely not!   In my own heart?  Absolutely.  I was the tree that fell in the forest.  And I HEARD mySELF, even if no one else did.