Sarah is a mother to over ten children. Nearly sixty if you count the ones who have moved out of the nest. Sometimes the days are unpredictable, and in the wild fields and back alleyways the runaway bunnies test the resolve of her love. But they underestimate the transfiguration powers of a mother. Be as slippery as a fish and a mother becomes a fisherman, be as stubborn as a rock, and a mother becomes a mountain climber, hide as a crocus among the weeds, and she becomes a gardener, try to fly away as a bird and she’ll become a tree to land in, become a sailboat and she will be the wind in your sails, join the circus, and she will become a tightrope walker. And if the bunnies scurry on home, they will be met with an embrace of grace and given a meal, perhaps a carrot.
Why choose to mother such stubborn and skittish bunny hearts? I’m not sure Sarah’s answer, but I can tell you I am humbled in my witness of it. While people trouble themselves with their own plans of climbing ladders and getting the attention of hot shots and big wigs, Sarah asks the children to plant flowers with her, and they do. They pick flowers, too. Later, they turn the flowers into jars of jelly. Sarah and her den of bunnies give them to neighbors and friends and any stranger who happens to walk through the threshold of our door. And we as a village put them on our freshly baked breads and share meals together. Hearts of stone, of lead, are softened into malleable gold. The alchemy of a mother.
There are some of the girls that notice the elemental changes in themselves and react with an astounding rage. They confuse love with witchcraft. So instead picking flowers, they gather sticks in bundles. They lay them at Sarah’s feet. They tie her up with their hisses and accusations. They call her names, and slander her own. They light a match and set her aflame.
She has seen this before, and she will see it again. She has lived through many a burning-at-the-stakes. What they hope will consume only purifies. It removes the dross from her own heart. And so she, with a smile on her face, lights a cigarette and waits for the flames to go out. She perseveres.
Happy Mother’s day to Sarah, a woman who believes it is much greater to serve than to be served, and a mother who welcomes children into our home as a devotion of love for this world and its creator.
Stepping Back 