Living Apothecary

 

~
Last evening’s wooded stroll on earthy paths was walking a living apothecary

Such abundance

It must be the way the rains have fallen soaking each seeds to life or its cool moist holding back a bloom

The forest floor has exhaled together

Giving life

Early we headed to the woods, gentle in care, we foraged a winters worth of health.

Bedstraw

Chickweed

Horsetail

Lungwort

Stinging Nettle

Plantain

Prairie Rose

Sheep Sorrel

Yarrow

As the sun sailed direct above we laid our harvest out to dry by summer’s warmth.

This year I took to a new herbal, I contemplated this manual for some time; near the close of this school year I figured this teaching mama could use a little gift to herself.  There is always some wisdom to gather when reading the words of mastery. Beverly Gray has given me a gift through her writing’s in The Boreal Herbal. This one speaks the ways of my woods, right down our lane over the hills and into the fields that we call home. It tells of the plants that make a carpet lush and bountiful around these parts, healing gifts.

Gracious and Generous.

~

 

 



Lochinvar

 

~

There are days of wild.

 

The one with a sword constant as the twinkle in the brown of his eye.

 

And a shield that stays at his side by day and bed by night.

 

That felted crown tells of his warrior stock, a story brewed deep in the core of my boy.

 

 Proud, True and Royal

 

 My Lochinvar

 

 Even the poet knew.

 

 Lochinvar

O Young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was a knight like the young Lochinvar.

Sir.Walter Scott

~

 

Unveiled Wonder

 

 

I feel it coming like the ripe just before birth, an instinctive knowledge that today unveils wonder.

I look at the dates and I marvel

Such significance for this Mother

Her first year has come round complete

A full nine months since we brought her into our family.

As I ponder dates and timings and the weight of this day I can’t help but feel security in knowing there is a Divine Orchestrator to this marvel.

For a Mother of adoption there is beauty yet agony on the date of birth,

I never have felt such longing then to be able to whisper it to my girl, how I wish to have carried you deep within and loved you with every breath and waited with a reverent anticipation to merge with something Holy bringing you to life. Yet our story is different and that time we were apart can never be given.

This is the longing of an Adoptive Mother.

Yet there is a grand and gracious expectance because without all of her story she would not be the profound and perfect preciousness she is.

Her soul was brought together by the

Author of Life

 

Born of another heritage, one I am so humbled to welcome as my own.

Born to a Teen Mother who’s shrivelled and despondent life breaks yours into something more like Christ.

I know so little of the actual birth of my daughter.

What I know echoes hurt through me.

I know the gush of water came hours before that teen mama managed the courage to accept this was upon her, she lay there a mess, wishing it would all just go away, all her fears met her in the mid of that night.

It was dawn when she heard the first cry.

It was the waking celebration of July First

She never washed her first born with her humbled tears or held her to her heart and fed her from her own ample goodness.

She just looked.

I can only imagine the chasm that lay between her and the beckoning beauty of her newborn.

The Father was twice the age of the Mother.

He’s a wanted criminal.

His anger has hurt, with his fist, words and abandonment.

 

I remember that day as clear as the days I birthed my other children, because pain makes memories vivid.

And that first of July stirred my heavy heart

I remember how we cornered the road at the North Bonaparte and the breeze ruffled the silver canopy of an ash tree and I knew the Rockies were between us and her; in rushes I felt the distance.

I took Roger’s hand for comfort as I said ’she may be in labour, I sense it, it seems so strange but I feel I should be there’. All my concerns ran raw down my cheeks; his grip tightened as he says so often, that, my heart is wide and much too sensitive to carry the needs of so many others.

You see she was just someone distant.

How were we to know this young lady was birthing our daughter?

As soon as I reached my computer I emailed the shelter

I wrote “she must be here! A few days early, but, did all go well?”

A moment later I got the first glimpse of Amaris.   

Tears came again

She was precious,

yet so vulnerable.

It was the week that followed that I first held her.

Tiny and chilled, because of her mama’s inexperience and inattention.

That Mama, she dropped her baby heavy into my waiting arms and gladly left her infant with me for a few hours.

At one week she had a rash, tummy troubles and a chill.

I rubbed the tummy, swaddled, and put some cream from my purse on the wounds already showing.

I kissed her, sang and cuddled her.

Encouraged the Mama,

you can do this, find ways to connect, hold her, bath her, look at her,

All while I ached

LOVE HER! LOVE HER!

She deserves, requires, love!

When the visit was over I left.

Drove away.

In my life I have walked away from the dire of this world.

Hunger in Africa

Babies on beaches

Little girls losing their innocence in slums

Infants birthed to teens living in shelters.

There has never been a harder burden for me to endure then knowing

I have the freedom

to walk away.

This time was the most excruciating.

 

At that point I had no thoughts of adopting this one.

It was never talked about or considered.

I encouraged parenting

 and kept a close eye on the baby.

I stole away from the bustle of my own as many times as I could to nurture others.

Three months it took

Three months we all held our breaths with the most cautious prayers.

 And then she asked

“Take my Baby”

Hauntingly hope filled words.

To be asked by another to raise and care for theirs, handing over flesh of your own flesh and willing it to another,

 race, culture, religion, family

Mother!

Could anything in life prepare me for this?

Nothing and everything.

Hindsight offers a clear view of the Lord leading me to our daughter.

Yet no book, conversation or story taught me how to hold the weight of one abandoning an infant into the accepting arms of another.

It’s a beautiful broken

 

After signatures and a series of official documents, I loaded her into the carrier and clipped her into our car and drove away from the mama who gave life to my daughter.

It all felt eerily easy yet humbly significant.

Ten minutes down the cool gray road leading home

I pulled to the side and on that glowing late September afternoon I scooped her tight into my body and whispered it as strong as my maternal heart could.

I love you!

I will never leave you!

You are safe!

I’m your Mother!

 

She slept every hour of every day for a week solid.

No eye contact

No hand movements

No laughter filled with life overflowing.

She was withdrawn into a safe place of avoidance.

In some ways I did experience her coming of life, just three months after her first breaths.

It was an awaking filled with the hope and pleasure of Holiness.

We as a family were living the miracle

Pleading and applauding and coaxing what was left for darkness.

It was a Holy unveiling of all that is pure and natural and a gift so often over looked.

Life

 

Then came her tears

So much emptying of the soul

Right into the shoulder of her Mother who wanted, ached to turn back time.

Her past has left marks.

The soul is a place where emotions, spirituality and character collide and her soul has been broken

The Brain sends a million messages connecting the complexity of who we are. Hers has a fingerprint of neglect smeared into its depths confusing processes.

We became healers the day we became her parents.

What an extraordinary privilege.

What an overwhelming task.

 

This Dawn

as I watch the world arise,  the song of the woods singing with amber’s hazy rise, natures dramatic salute to the new of this month, the seventh, a complete nine months fulfilling the time of gestation and formation of something new. I know mine and hers is a story I must tell, here today, so that fear and the force of a mother’s care can’t hide details behind a veil of protection.

 

Today

I accept what has been in the past and look humbly forward with all the hope of Heaven

I will watch as my girl continues to flourish to the pace Heaven has set.

I will continue and constantly be overwhelmed by the gift of adoption and

The most gracious beauty in my daughter

 

Amaris Anne Milner

Happy Birthday sweet love,

 I will cherish every birthday we celebrate as family and ache for the one we did not experience together.

You are everything I have ever prayed for.

All my Love

 Mommy