A Good Question

When I was a highschooler, I can remember my Uncle Seb and my Aunt Philly visiting us at our house on Bible Hill. They brought one of my myriad cousins- this one a girl toddler with a beady and suspicious eye.

This child gave me the up and down, then asked me in a demanding and condescending tone"Whose mother are you?"

A good question, even after 50 plus years. During that time many people have asked me if I had children. New co-workers and my patients and their families were always curious. When I replied that I was not married, some were confused. What did it matter, their looks seemed to say.

Well it mattered to me, and I chose the New England spinsterhood of an outmoded day and age.

But not having children does not mean not having to mother and be bothered by others. Ask my married friends.

Ask me, as a nurse who has practiced for 44 years. I took care of hundreds of people I was not related to, and in the now dead tradition of Nightingale nursing, was duty bound to always put their needs above my own.

Now my nursing career is vestigial, since I work only a few days a month at the night clinic at the Little Big House. But some things do not change. The inmates who have already been judged fear no further judgement from me, and I take care of them as best I can.

There are no shortages of others dependent on me in the animal and vegetable kingdoms either. I have over a hundred seedlings in flats. Dozens of plant cuttings. Two gardens.

Not to mention possums, raccoons, and porch cats, one whom just presented these-



So- not all mothers are mothers. It is one of Nature's great jokes.

I would say Happy Mother's Day to my mother here but that would be pointless. She thinks the Internet is the Devil's Playground.