Scattered to The Wind - For My Mother
My soul has been searching for the meaning of my birth
I have looked in all the corners of this enormous Earth
There are so many more places that I want to see
I want to go walk in the footsteps
of those who walked there before me.
My people come from Ireland, Scotland, and England,
and the open plains of Kansas, and Oklahoma too
where the land is flat, and the sky is a brilliant blue.
I never knew anything about grandmother Joada until these last few years
now I am beginning to understand my own Mother and her silent tears.
Mother didn't grow up with her Momma to tuck her in bed at night
she slept in a cold empty room with no one to protect her
from the things that went bump in the night.
My mother’s young life - she shed many tears
no one to love her and protect her - from her many woes and fears.
She was taught to be quiet - so alone in her room
she would look out her small window and sing
to the man in the moon.
No one to comfort her - no one to kiss away a tear,
growing up alone in a convent - year after year.
Mother married my father December 28th, 1928,
Oh how they loved one another - she’d found the perfect mate.
My father was a farmer and they lived with his Dawson Clan,
they started raising a family, their first born was named after Dads' Mother
she was called Virginia Ann
Three years later along came Joada Lee
big brown eyes and dimples, she looked like our mother
she was a beautiful baby indeed!
Our father decided it was time to move away from Missouri,
his wife and little girls who weren't very old
Colorado is where they lived for awhile
Dad was mining for silver and gold .
In 1936 Thomas Henry was born in that state
where the mountains are a mile high.
Mother missed her family in Missouri, and she would silently cry
holding her new little baby - she rocked and sang him a lullaby.
Sylvia was born on February 29th, in 1940
it was one of those cold “Leap years”
No money to pay for the rent, so again they came
my Mother’s silent tears.
Mother said the snow drifts were up to the eaves
and the diapers were froze stiff on the line strung on trees
times were bad before - but never as bad as it was this time.
Nothing for rent or the expected new baby - not even a dime.
A tiny little boy Mother would never rock in her arms,
again her tears for his soul left at birth - he went straight to heaven
Then God blessed Mother with another boy - our brother John
was born in Montana - on a hot August day in 1947.
Washington was the state where our father went to work in a gold mine
and this is where I - Linda Susan - the last child - came to be
I was my mothers birthday present - she was 40 years older than me!
My Mother, Father, two sisters and two brothers are all gone now
There are only Virginia, Johnny, and me.
If Dad hadn't turned in his plow for a pick axe
I wonder where on earth we would be?
It seems to me now that I understand - know how very hard were the fates
to have all of us children - across the United States
Born, lived, and died - in different places to the end
Mother’s tears and her babies - forever scattered to the wind!
LSB 040704
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