No. Sunday was not Goddess Day; it was Mother's Day.
I rolled out of bed, stepped over the piles of laundry, and put on an ill-fitting bathing suit. Casey pleaded with me for 20 minutes to take her in the car to rescue a stuffed cat with silky fur and big eyes from a horrible life at the mall. I told her that we would go rescue the cat after she picked out 12 stuffed animals from her toy bin that she didn't love anymore so that we could deliver them to new owners. I was told, " No way. Never Never Never. You are not my friend mommy."
She's right. I am not her friend. I am her mother. I am a goddess. Perhaps she is a goddess in training. The stuffed cat continues to live at the mall.
After washing the dishes and watering the plants, I was relaxed. There is something therapeutic about running water that lets your mind drift to a needed vacation near a waterfall on a sparsely populated island. I was brought back to reality at the sight of my daughter showing off her prize catch, a baby snake. "Mommy, mommy, look at my new friend!" she exclaimed. "Let's look for its mommy" she pleaded. "Heavens no, put it back in the grass and let it find its own mommy!" I gasped.
The baby snake was placed in one of Casey's many habitats that inhabit our yard. For the next hour we "competed" in our ritual swim races. I guess its the age: where kids want to compete at everything; they want to win; they want to win a prize; and they often gloat about winning even if they win unfairly and with help from us goddesses.
Mother's Day would not be the same if it came and went without a list of life lessons.
Well I had written a gem of a list in the draft stage of this post. Then, I became distracted and I deleted my post.
I must have been half-heartedly enthusiastic about my list, otherwise I never would have allowed such a slip-up. Maybe I'm tired of reiterating "life lessons." Perhaps, this is why I have 3 books featuring mother/daughter relationships lying around my house, each half read. Maybe my five year old is right to tune me out most of the time.
My thoughts drift to the greek goddesses. Haven't we all, at one time or another, gone the way of Persephone and eaten pomegranate seeds offered to us by a representative of the underworld? Will my daughter stray from my learned teachings and separate herself from my guidance. You bet she will. Feasting on Hades' pomegranate seeds guaranteed that Persephone would be separated a third of every year from her mother. According to this Greek myth, this separation is the cause of winter as Persephone's mother, Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and fertility, refused to let the world flourish while her daughter was away. Upon Persephone's return from Hades each year, Demeter allowed the world to be reborn in springtime.
All this talk of goddesses excites me to read about Hestia, Aphrodite and Athena, and study the crossover between myth and reality. It is time to celebrate my inner goddess.
So, I raced into my house and unearthed a box of "femcrit" books and some supermama reads. I found it, the book I would enjoy on my Mother's Day!
My mother's day is from this day forward, goddess day.
