I can still hear her playing,
mud splashing up with every jump.
Her laughter is now an echo,
her boots overflowing with rainwater.

Mom made me see
the wonder in everything:
The great big things
& all the little things
that made the great big things.

Flesh of her flesh,
her son was a blank canvas
on which to paint
a new, better life.

Though she wasn’t the star,
she worked behind the scenes.
The lines that came
from the mouths of her creations,
were sometimes her very own.

She loved her baby for who she was now,
not for who she might become.
She’d love her in all her forms,
for every 7 years,
she would be a new being,
with memories of the old.