ST44 ... Everyday is a Mothers Day
My Four Older Sisters, they were in their teens in the 50's and were my Mothers too.
Mothers come in many forms. Besides my natural mother whom was working, sick, busy, i had the advantage and pleasure of four older sisters that looked after me, watched over me, protected me, (father unavailable). I am grateful for their attention and love thru my young rascal years. Without them, i presume i could have gone astray even more than i had. September 9 1956, i was 8 years old and my illusions of motherhood-protectors was shattered by a revolution that transformed the planet, shook it up from within, it was never the same…..rock and roll, Elvis, ripped hearts apart. and put them back together again.
I remember the excitement in the air bouncing off the walls in the living room. I had no idea what was about to take place. In 1956 there were no frantic emotions that could surpass this event. I would often sit on the back of the couch-like chairs and brush my sisters long beautiful hair while watching some black and white strange tv. I loved them all like my mother. Possibly that is what i was doin when Elvis shook it all up on the Ed Sullivan show. From that moment on my view of my sister-mothers changed, it was like some delirium had entered their heads. I was ‘all shook up’, shocked, traumatized. There before me, all my mothers gone strange, incredibly weird, i couldn’t rap my head around it, it left an impression of uncertainty right down to the core of my soul. I was forever changed, something was different, the lid to uncertainty was opened wide.
I vaguely remember the music, it was strong, rocked, fantastic…….it pushed my head into a world that beat my mind to the heart. I was hooked, but i didn’t know it yet.
I recovered, they changed, the world changed, and yet stayed the same, but we had no idea what the 60’s was about to expose our virgin minds into. My mothers, they stayed there, in the 50’s in their heads. They all married and remained faithful to their faith, their marriages, their worlds; lots of kids, they became real mothers and mothers of mothers, it’s endless. The sixties took me in and out of alternate realities like a dream rolling down roads of eternities. My mothers could no longer understand me but they understood love, motherly love, in their own way they all adjusted into a world that the 50’s implemented. I got swept up by the mystery of the 60’s, from the beatles to dylan to the depth of it all; brushed up fast against my mind.
This is for them, my sisters, their motherly help and love. In a few years we will all be gone and none of this will matter. They, all four of them helped to shape my world with respect and honour that they themselves displayed thru-out their lives. Thanks, from the depths of my heart….these memories kept the mother in me i depended upon alive.
Mothers come in many ways. All are born from Mother Earth. From the lowlands to the highlands of humanity there is no warmth as the love from a mother….to that, there is no doubt.
PS: maybe i got the dates wrong, maybe it wasn’t the first Elvis appearance…irrelevant.
Happy Mothers Day for the Rest of Your Days….to all the Sisters in this World….without you i’d be nothing; i’d crawl thru hell to save your lives.
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In my later teen years besides my sisters, my oldest brother Dave's wife Darlaine was super close to me and my two brothers Billy and Allyn. We were called the three little boys early on because there was a large gab in years between the five older siblings and us three little boys. I was the youngest and certainly was the one that got into most of the trouble with authority and tradition. In that respect i still mistrust what most trust, the royal family, political structures, many institutions, the names are eons long. Thanks Darlaine for always taking me in when i was so close to the weary streets. You were my 5th sister-mother, no doubt.