When He Needed Her

Prayer For a New Mother by Dorothy Parker

The things she knew, let her forget again-
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.


...Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. Luke 2:19

Sometimes the trusting way is the hard way of bare feet over sharp stones. Mary's poor, poor feet.

We know she was with Him, her boy, at the foot of His cross but what were their private moments like these two who were pea-pod likenesses? These two who would deny the Father nothing.

I think they laughed. Had private jokes. Insightful observations. I think they were fun, this mother and her son, and deep. I think they liked each other and respected each other and teased each other. I think neither one took no for an answer.

He was gone all too soon but when He needed her she was there and that is the most any mother wants said of her by way of praise.


-Kat

Dedicated to moms who show up.

Picture from Notre Musique