The story makes the world
I studied film production in University; our directing teacher was the venerable Dr Katherine Stenholm. One day in class she made this statement about filmmaking which, at the time, seemed ludicrous, "We make reality." To my young indoctrinated mind, that was beyond our human capacity; God made reality and it was so. However, I've grown to understand more of the nuance of what she meant. This morning I read George Monbiot's excellent Weekly Review article in this week's Guardian. His title and premise is, It's time to tell a new story if we want to change the world. He articulates much of what I've been ruminating recently about our individual and collective need for a better story from which we live.
He says, "Stories are the means by which we navigate the world. They allow us to interpret its complex and contradictory signals. We all possess a narrative instinct: an innate disposition to listen for an account of who we are and where we stand. When we encounter a complex issue and try to understand it, what we look for is not consistent and reliable facts but a consistent and comprehensible story. When we ask ourselves whether something 'makes sense', the 'sense' we seek is not rationality, as scientists and philosophers perceive it, but narrative fidelity."
We are the storytelling creature and without a coherent story we fall into a kind of madness. We hold to our myths and legends because they give us a form to work from—the archetypes from which we can understand ourselves and our relation to others. One cannot remove the 'story' from the 'self' without either replacing it with another or causing significant trauma. This is evidenced—everywhere in countless ways. From the products we purchase out of 'brand loyalty' to the celebrities we admire, in our adherence to a certain sports team to a willingness to die in battle for the cause of a nation. It's often based far more on the story we've been told or tell ourselves rather than objective reality.
I'd like to think of myself as a rational person but I know that my own life is not given meaning nor is it motivated by lists of facts. Monbiot, in his article states, "A string of facts, however well attested, will not correct or dislodge a powerful story. The only response it is likely to provoke is indignation: people often angrily deny facts that clash with the narrative 'truth' established in their minds. The only thing that can displace a story is a story. Those who tell the stories run the world." We aren't living in a 'post truth' world; objectively, truth is still truth. We are living in a world where the collective narrative can be powerfully shifted and driven on a mass scale. We are in a world where The Story is even more paramount than ever. All these matters we focus on, the economy, the environment, migration, human rights, resources—we discuss them all as if control of them is the goal and end of power. They are insignificant, or at most, secondary to the power derived from The Story. Consider this, twenty years from now will it matter more who has more control of all the oil in the world or who has shaped a story about how and what resources we use? Will it matter who controls a given swath of geography or how we consider the migrant and the other—how we consider identity? The Story is the basis for how the world continues and we shape that narrative as individuals and as a collective of societies.
The point this keeps coming back to for me is the issue of immigration. Immigrants must be given a space to make a new story in our adopted homes. If we do not feel part of a place's story we will never feel part of that place. We cannot live as sane human beings without that story in place—if that's missing then one will latch on to another story and that's often one based on disenfranchisement and fear. ISIS provides a story of a place and identity that can call in all the misplaced people around the world who are hungry for a story to live under. They've taken up a story that's undergird Islam for centuries, re-worked it to their own devices and deployed it as a narrative to fit their own needs, "if you cannot feel at home in the place you were born; join us in making this new story for the future." We are suffering for a scarcity of healthy stories.
We have to find a new way to make The Story for us as human beings on Earth while, simultaneously, find a new story for each of us as we readily move about upon it. All that list of serious matters above are also real and increasingly weigh upon us; but, without new stories to guide our actions, we aren't going to have a remedy for any of them. We have to recognise the reality of where we are (both literally and metaphorically); we can't make the story up on a blank slate. We have to respect the place we are in and start from there. I'm trying to consider exactly from where that story begins. I think, perhaps having read too much Wendell Berry, it truly starts from the ground up—that our stories start from a place and that place begins with soil. After writing so much about the idea of stewardship, I'm convinced that we are, ultimately, stewards of the soil. There's not much point in anything else if we destroy the actual earth beneath us; so I'd propose we start building our stories, place to place and person to person on the stewardship of soil (however, that's probably another topic to explore).
One final note though; back to where I began in directing class. The first thing to suffer in our education, when we tell the story that capital is primary, are the liberal arts. However, if you remove Humanities from the curriculum, you remove someone's capacity to both tell and interpret stories. People are rendered powerless to either understand or generate stories and can then be controlled. That's, of course, a purposed act by neoliberal governments and institutions who want to shape the story to their own ends. We may not feel we have great powers but, if we have the power to tell a story, the story makes the world.
A Shadow Full of Stars
I'm at a time in my life where it's become increasingly necessary to 'own' my faults and failures. There are many things we might let go on the wayside as we mature but these don't really go away until we face them and hold them to the light. Unfortunately, that means I have to look blankly into my shadow and converse with a side of myself I'm not especially comfortable with.
I took this picture the other day walking to the shops; I later noticed that, in the harsh light under my deep shadow, the pavement reflected tiny glimmers of light. I need to realise the benefit of looking deep into my darker side to come up with those points in contrast. It's in darkness we see the stars—and sometimes we need starlight to find our bearings.
On reading Hillbilly Elegy
There is a challenging pivot point between observations made as an 'insider' and those from an 'objective' outsider. Often the person on the inside is too close to the subject to speak comprehensively about a given matter; however, the outsider risks generalisations and fills gaps with assumptions based on limited knowledge. (I think this is where good journalism marries the two; a competent journalist can give voice to the insider who would otherwise not be heard.)
There is a tradition of memoir told from both perspectives. We have inner monologues about a person's life in a given place that provide a slice out of time picture. We also have the other extreme such as Black Like Me that tells a story from a perspective that could only be manufactured. Everything here is valid; I don't have any criticism for one or the other as they tell the story in different ways. However, there is another layer on top that involves the expectations of the audience and their inherent bias and suppositions. Hillbilly Elegy was promoted as a portrait of Appalachian life and culture. I had read several reviews (from national publications; I should also read reviews from regional papers), that touted the book as a view into the lives of Appalachians. This is simplistic and not something I think the author intended. It's possible to attempt such a book; it's just not what this book is. The risk of promoting or reading it with that purpose in mind though is that, of course, one gets a skewed image of 'those people' (in the same way that you can't read a book about a Chinese family in Chicago and know all about Chinese people).
What it does relate is a simultaneously tragic and hopeful story of one man's experience growing up in Ohio and Kentucky. Much of it resonated with me; I wasn't raised in the same poverty or difficult family situation as he but it was always something a few doors down. If you're from Appalachia, you are never far from poverty; however, most people are also distant from extreme wealth as well so I think, at least in my experience, there was a certain type of equity (you didn't think less of neighbours or relations because they had less as long as they were upstanding good people). The picture J.D. Vance relates in his book chimes with that but the tragic trajectory of his story brings us into the present where people are giving up hope and aspiration.
The book has called on me to reflect further on whether I still look at West Virginia from my perspective as an insider or now from outside. The several times I've been back in past years to my parent's (and grandparent's) hometown, I've visited a place in decline and decay. Almost the only people who are left are pensioners and apparently younger people are mostly on welfare. There seems to be little life or industry to the place or people (the county has the highest unemployment in one of the poorest states in the nation). I remember, as a child, seeing this same place as a more vibrant and interesting. How much of this change is what happened in the place or what has happened from my change in innocence and experience? I can sense the damage to the place brought by years of exploitative industry—to both the land and the people. There is this evident decline in spirit, like a draining in colour visible in people across the state (witness the ill health, obesity, and prescription drug addiction).
I also struggle with leaving 'home'. Vance now lives in San Francisco; I'm on the other side of the planet in Sydney. Like so many Appalachians, we've felt compelled to leave in order to make sensible lives for ourselves. For some of us, there will always be a gnawing call back to the hills and this feeling that we've abandoned them. The opportunity for careers there are limited; but, equally, the opportunity to bring healing to a damaged place and people is overflowing. I hope that people can read the book and look past their own suppositions about the region; it's not simply a huge swath of land populated by rednecks. It's clear that, especially with the election of Donald Trump and the shock that followed in the wake of this, much of the country does not understand the social and economic situation of people in Appalachia. To think 'they' are just a bunch of lazy people on the dole is to misunderstand the promise that was given that they could work hard and obtain a decent life. For millions of people in the region, it's not that this isn't a given—it's truly out of reach. Appalachia has this knockabout history of poverty and despair; that's the picture that's been in the travel guide for generations. But, I'm not entirely sure how true that's been on the whole when jobs could be had and there was some way to keep one's family fed. Now, we need to hear and retell these stories. We need, both on the inside and out, to consider closely what is happening as there is always some means of empowerment in this. We need the truth of what has happened—but, again, as I said in my last post, we also need better stories about what is possible. Perhaps, regardless of where we are, 'The Expats of Appalachia' can write both into being.
What kind of heritage?
Representing the United States with disunity... (image by Andrew Shurtleff/The Daily Progress)
I'm Appalachian. I'm specifically from West Virginia, which 'sided' with the North in the American Civil War; regardless, I consider myself 'Southern.' Each of the above are layers of identity and heritage. Above those labels I'm an American which, though we consider it some kind of concrete identity, is really so diverse an amalgamation as to defy any sort of compact definition. If anything, America, as I was raised to ideally understand it, is composed of dissimilar peoples who have come together in the United States. Our similarity is based on and strengthened by our diversity. My personal identity is expanded though by further experiences I've had in other places and cultures. In other words, my identity doesn't come from existing in one place or only referencing that single place. Identity comes from an understanding of my place in the larger whole. It's both looking back and forward, not something static and based wholly on the imagined past. It's also tempered by an informed understanding of other people and their experiences. Neither my culture or my personal history have formed in isolation; before I can comprehend my own place in the story, I need to make the effort to properly 'read' that of others. Otherwise, I'll have only a narrow and weakly formed identity based on my internal monologue.
Recently, there was an incident in Virginia that involved a particular set of Americans protesting that their heritage was under attack. Heritage and identity are based on the stories we tell to ourselves and each other. The story that these (mostly white men) tell to others and themselves is that they are a now a minority at risk of dissolution. The elements of this story are made from a collection of objects and 'small h' histories reformed into a new narrative that drive them to this conclusion. The focus in Virginia was a memorial statue of a Confederate general from the Civil War. These monuments are peppered around the South as a lingering reminder of that period in our shared history; however, many are slated for removal as they are and have become increasingly a tool for these 'oppressed oppressors'. I'm tempted to speak about 'the current political climate' or to go off on the poor state of leadership in the White House; but, in some ways, these are indicative rather than causal. We have malicious and tawdry leaders because we, as a diverse group of peoples, have allowed ourselves to become so or have permitted that kind of energy to inform our narrative. I don't really believe the men violently protesting and carrying NAZI flags truly represent the spirit of the South as they think they do; they are more representative of an underlying and systemic disease in the culture that has produced them. They say they are the embodiment of a real America; they are instead an example of ignorance and a complete misunderstanding of what America essentially is. (Further I have to wonder if, despite his personal or political aims, Gen Robert E. Lee would have condoned fascists using his monument as a symbol of their cause!)
There was a physical clash between the protesters and counter-protesters on the weekend and a woman was killed (it's a wonder that more weren't in the presence of heavily armed angry men; I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before these situations spill into uncontrolled violence). The resolution of this is, in the main, not a question of taking up arms on either side, it goes back to our stories. These men don't need some recognition or revolution to satisfy their frustrations; we who oppose their views need not clamp down on their actual freedoms (that just re-enforces their narrative of perceived oppression). We need better stories―stories that are informed by a broader understanding of ourselves and others, stories that aren't based in the Shadow side of our past but have come through and out of it, stories that recognise the reality of now rather than the imagined 'then'. Without a better story, people fester in ignorance of both their own true heritage and that of others. The men protesting on the weekend shouted 'you will not replace us' as if there are hordes of people coming to America specifically to become bigoted disillusioned men. These men have so wholly separated themselves from an understanding of 'the other' that their comprehension of other people outside their own sphere is stilted and misread.
I'm going to digress for a moment. I said in the first paragraph that my identity doesn't come from referencing a single place; that's not to say that a sense of place isn't important. We all need to have roots in a place and/or be able to transplant ourselves into new soil. That's a needed skill as people move about freely (and, increasingly, unwillingly) around the world. What we must realise is that this transition does not mean that existing cultures must be eliminated or that we must lose our own identities. What it does mean is that I need to have a healthy understanding of myself, to be able to communicate that to others and welcome them into my own culture. It requires effort on both parties in the encounter. I am a migrant into another culture now; though Australia is in many ways an easy transition, it's required of me to make the necessary effort to integrate into this society. That does not mean I lose my own identity nor does should it require Australia to diminish itself in order to accommodate me. I think the shouting angry men in Virginia are still looking at the world in a Colonial way―that, with any influx of 'the other' there is an invasion of culture that supplants the native one. That's certainly still possible; however, not necessary for either the migrant or the receiving culture. It's also incumbent on the native culture to offer its best narrative for the newcomers to enter into (in the same way one must offer a rich soil for the transplant as it roots itself). This effort is even more important than ever as the volume and speed of migration increases round the world. Migration, within living memory, was in many ways a slower and more permanent life event. Now we can fly round the world in a day and visit 'home' several times a year; our communication is instantaneous and continual. There is little incentive to wholly integrate into another culture when the ties to ones own are so thorough and especially if the culture one has entered into doesn't offer a compelling narrative in which one can have a place. There is a much larger issue here that probably warrants more thought and writing―but if you want to look at the creation of 'the terrorist next door' don't place the blame wholly on radical preachers far away. Ask why the young man who did some terrible thing couldn't find a place in the story of the country his parents migrated to. Why was the story he was offered as a citizen of one society so weak that it could be so easily supplanted by some YouTube videos and a shady guy he met online?
Ask as well why the men carrying NAZI flags to a rally in Virginia can't find an identity other than that of hate and bigotry. Ask why they have created this kind of narrative as their own history and want to offer that as a way forward for America. How do we counter that failing? We must create better stories and speak them with both both conviction and humility.
The Harbour Bridge at Daylight
Just because the Harbour Bridge was mentioned today in the media (for a ridiculous reason which doesn't bear repeating) I shall post a picture from a very early morning photo shoot when I was waiting for the fast ferry to Manly.
Open Letter from Quakers Australia on Marriage Plebiscite
This was posted today as an open response to the Marriage Equality Plebiscite from Quakers Australia:
The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, supports the right of adult couples in loving and committed relationships to marry, regardless of gender. We also support the right of such couples to have their marriages accorded equal recognition and respect under the law of Australia.
Our faith prompts us to recognise the divine in all people. It is a basic Quaker principle that all people are equal in the Spirit. As part of the journey to live our faith, we have worked to support the equal treatment of all persons regardless of sex, race or religion. The way has been hard at times, and we recognise that true equality will always remain a direction to be travelled rather than a destination to be reached.
In 2010 Australian Quakers came together and agreed to celebrate marriages within our Meetings regardless of the sexual orientation or gender of the partners. Quakers have long held that marriage “is the Lord’s work and we are but witnesses”. The question before us was simply whether to open our hearts to these marriages that already existed among us.
The law currently prevents Quakers from facilitating the same legal recognition for same-sex marriages that we do for other marriages. This legal prohibition is fundamentally inconsistent with Quaker faith and practice. True religious freedom would encompass the freedom to include, celebrate and recognise the commitments of LGBTIQ couples, as both spiritual and legal marriages.
We recognise that everyone will be at a different point in the journey. Some have purported to speak on behalf of all Christians in opposing marriage equality. Such people do not speak for us. We invite them to continue to follow their path with integrity, while asking that they recognise that their way is not for all people of faith.
Quakers consider that a majority vote in a voluntary public poll is an inappropriate way to decide the legal rights of minorities who are subject to discrimination. We are also concerned about the impacts on LGBTIQ people, their children and families. But if such a vote is held, we encourage everyone to open their hearts, to choose love over fear, and to support marriage equality in Australia.
Jo Jordan
Presiding Clerk
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia
Australia Yearly Meeting Office
119 Devonshire St
Surry Hills NSW 2010
P: 0403 913 719
E: ymclerk@quakers.org.au
W: www.quakersaustralia.org.au
Click on this link for my own thoughts on the matter...The Homosexuals Aren't Coming for Your Children.
Facebook:Disconnect
I've decided to leave Facebook. I've two primary reasons: first, I don't think it's allowing for the type of connection I want to build and maintain with my friends; second, it is frankly starting to creep me out.
Facebook, on the surface, has been a way to keep tabs on friends spread far across the world and reach back in time to maintain friendships from the past. However, I don't find that I'm engaging with people in the considered way I need to on order to make these relationships substantive. I often feel I'm peering round the corners of connections as if looking through your living room window across the street. I have friends on Facebook with whom I've not communicated directly in a dozen years or more but from whom I receive regular updates on the state of their health and families, their travels, work, and major life decisions. Likewise, when I sporadically share something on Facebook, I often am either bringing out something very deep from my life in a passing way or making a comment on a specific situation that might not translate well to social media. In both cases, I'm sending or receiving a partial picture of life that isn't making that essential connection in the way that I want or need with my friends—and I am feeling the lack of that in the process.
Also, I do manage part of social media for my work and am privy to some back-end aspects of Facebook that disturb me (just to be clear, this is from presentations I've attended from companies that offer data mining from Facebook, not anything that my employer is actually doing). Facebook, from all the interactions you have with friends and companies online, knows all too much about you. I find myself confronted with ads on Facebook almost before I myself know I'm shopping for something. A couple years ago, days after my divorce and before I had openly communicated this to my friends, I had ads appear for dating services (specifically dating services tailored to divorcées). I'm not comfortable with the subtle cognitive shift that comes from an algorithm deciding what is most pertainant in my life on a given day.
I need to maintain an account as it's the way I access the admin for my work page. But I'm going to make it quite sparse and disconnect from all of you as 'friends' on Facebook. What I would ask you to do is, if you do want to commune with me, please reach out occasionally via email or the contact page here. I will also attempt to write more on my weblog and maintain a regular flow of thoughts (I just want to do it on my own terms and in a space where I'm controlling the back end of things). What I don't want to do is disappear from people's lives; I'm not leaving Facebook to withdraw but, instead, to more significantly and directly engage with people I care about. We can't do that in a quick skim through our timelines with ads for miscelleny inserted in the mix.
So, I'm here in a more focused way and want to keep the connections that we've taken time (whether a year ago or twenty) to have some part in each other's lives. I think, for me, that's not benefited by Facebook; I'd like to hear from you, dear friends; I just no longer want a social media page to be the arbiter of our connection.
I'm curious about two things now. One is how many people comment on this in Facebook vs. here on my weblog. The second is, after I post this and start cleaning out my account, whether I'll suddenly get a barrage of messages from The Algorithm asking me not to leave.
The homosexuals aren't coming for your children
We can manage to see both colour and black and white (Getty Images)
This morning I received an email from Lyle Shelton, Managing Director of The Australian Christian Lobby. I have neither met Mr Shelton nor communicated with him in any way, yet he saw fit to send an email encouraging me, as a ''Church Leader" to ''activate'' in response to the postal plebiscite on marriage equality. Mr Shelton did not contact me previously about aid for refugees fleeing to Australia from conflicts abroad; he did not contact me about the need for interfaith dialogue in a pluralistic society; he did not even contact me last week about an appropriate faith response to the homeless encampment in Martin Place. Mr Shelton has reached out, for the first time, about an issue he assumes must be the primary point of agreement that I, as a Quaker, have with the general community of Christians in Australia (namely that a sizable portion of Australian residents are less deserving of a given set of rights than ''us'').
I have, if I were to actually think about it, at least eight colleagues at my workplace who are gay (or, rather, who have made known that they are as it honestly has nothing to do with our work relationship). I have a number of friends and acquaintances who are gay. Some of them, amazingly, have families and seem to lead relatively happy lives (or, at least, as happy lives as the rest of ''us'' manage to do as they are equally as human with neither more nor fewer faults that others).
The email I received this morning implies, ominously, that the inclusion of gay people in the same category of rights that are enjoyed by other Australians, will somehow bode ill for ''our'' children. This is the same straw man set up anytime homosexuality is mooted in a public space, they are coming for your children. The email specifically mentions the evils of the Safe Schools program; Safe Schools is not a means to advocate or promote homosexuality. It's a way to provide a healthy space for young people who are coming to terms with their own sexuality. It's a way to educate children, as they come to comprehend a new and sometimes confusing part of life, about the need for inclusion and understanding of others. (I still find the whole thing a bit bewildering at forty-two; give the kids some tools for goodness' sake!)
The message in the email was that, by allowing for a safe space in schools, religious freedom would be curtailed. Their logic concludes that, if ''our'' religious freedom is to be maintained then the freedoms of others must, of necessity, be suppressed. This never works in a way that is not damaging to both the free and certainly not to the ones who are put down. Basically everyone is bound in an increasingly narrowed container of freedoms that are defined by a subset of society. Freedom of conscience, private action, and self-determination aren't concepts that constrain religion or belief; these are, indeed, the foundation of a society where all faiths can flourish. Paradoxically, the argument that a given religious idea should prevail over all others is what eventually causes both that idea and the larger system to implode.
There is a much deeper issue here than homophobia; I would say that most of the people behind such anti-gay movements are not especially afraid of gay people (they are uncomfortable, but there is a difference between that and fear). And few of them actually think that there is some gay agenda to come into schools and ''turn'' their children gay. What they are most concerned about is that, by teaching children how to understand others, they will lose control over the narrow worldview they want their children and general society to have. If I develop the parallel skills of self-determination and empathy, there is little hold that a prescriptive social or religious system can have over me; I can go on and determine what is necessary for social cohesion based on my interaction with "them" (and realise that, in fact, I am part of "them").
This is rather blunt, but I think the essence of it. The Australian Christian Lobby doesn't care who you are in bed with; they'd rather really not think about that. (Or, there is a whole other story here that some people might be thinking of it...a bit too much.) What they do fear is that there will be a gradual opening of understanding that this group of people who they have demonised are actually ''humans'' with rights, that they are, indeed, just like everybody else. And these kinds of revelations break the bonds of control that ''Church Leaders'' have over their flocks. It's the same reason these people are opposed to interfaith dialogue; breaking down the us and them dynamic weakens the bind of control from within. The primary fear is that, without The Other to oppose, there will not be enough spiritual locus to hold things together in the group and it will dissolve. What they can't see is that we all can hold our own sacredness; that, if The Other holds a given matter sacred, it does not diminish that which is sacred for me.
I cannot speak as a Church Leader. For one, that's not how Quakers work but, also, there is no way to speak for all Christians any more than one can speak for all Australians or white people or any group (or, conversely, can one speak of The Homosexuals, The Muslims, etc.). To assume that one has that ability, as is assumed in this email, is overly presumptive. I would ask though, what is to be gained by furthering inequity on this matter? The dogged determination to oppose it is now going to cost the treasury many millions of dollars for a postal plebiscite. To what end when I would argue that gay people will, if not now then eventually, be granted full equality. This is reminiscent of a flat earth argument in the years following the discovery with all certainty that we are walking on a sphere. But, more pointedly, are you indeed arguing for inequity and a continued narrowing of understanding in the world? If that is your proposal, for a world where people are actively discriminated against based on the parameters you set, you lose the argument at the outset. Speak your truth, by all means; but bring a positive truth as a contribution to the whole, not as a means to contain and control. We are, by all obvious markers, in a world of diversity; we need to learn how to generate understanding and inclusion in it or we are not going to progress (or, frankly, survive). This has far larger implications than this issue at hand and those other matters are here upon us now as we dither!
Update on this; see the open letter response from Quakers Australia here.
Mother's Day Without
Out in the gardens in light and life
This has been a year of firsts which, inevitably after someone's death, follows a year of lasts. This is the first mother's day without my mother. The picture above is, I think, the last picture we had together. It was on a walk a few days before I returned to Australia in late April last year. By this time today in May, Mom was back in hospital with a recurrent infection. We had several walks like this in the time we had last April. On this one or another, we sat on a bench and she said that she was okay if she had to go—that she had lived a good life and was content with whatever was to come. I'm content too; I dearly miss her, but in some ways one can't argue the point of contentment with a dying person. We bring who we are to this life and, if given that opportunity in our passing, we have first opinion in the matter as we go. I can try to rationalise a peace right now by considering how mom was going and the likelihood that, had she lived till now, she would probably be very ill, that her quality of life would be poor, etc. But, that's almost beside the point. She wasn't expressing contentment about dying just as an escape from pain; she was content because I think she genuinely felt she had a good life and was fulfilled in it. She said, of course, she wished she had more time but that would be the wish of anyone living a contented life. I'm just thankful she had the time and opportunity to express this as we transitioned through our lasts and firsts.
As these times come, I'm realising a lot about language and assumptions we have. I overheard someone on Friday say something to the extent of 'well if we don't have children, at least we all have mothers.' In these past weeks, I've seen a lot of advertisements about not 'forgetting mom' on mother's day. Previously it somehow didn't readily occur to me that, wait, not everyone has a mother. I suppose it's human nature to take for granted that one's mother is always there because she always has been. Do consider for a moment how acute that loss can feel for those who have lost a mother on a day like today (and equally for women who would want to be mothers but can't or who have lost children).
But, today I won't 'forget mom'; I was back in the States last month walking in the same garden, sitting on the same bench. From all I can sense, she continues walking in contentment with everyone who loved her in this life as we walk on in ours.