XXXI

Tuco read Arlu's note.
She'd wrote, "One thing I like about you
is you sing
in your own voice.¹"

And she wrote of her mom,
"Mom always said,
'Never compare your inside
with somebody else's outside.'¹"
She was proud of her mom.

Tuco thought of the radio program
he'd heard the other morning,
"Singing Mom's Songs for Mother's Day.²"

Moms try to sing in their own voice,
but sometimes they feel
they need to shift the emphasis
so the growing one
hears what needs to be learned.
What needs to become
part of their inside.

Its a hard habit to break
once the growing is done.
Well, the growing shaped
by a parent or more is done.

Another show this afternoon
had a man talking to a woman
who sounded like his mom.
She talked about her pride in her mom,
the teaching and the honest being of her mom.

There was also a medley
of voices remembering,
with pride and love,
the growing shaped with love.
Near the end,
the woman mentioned her other mother.
Not a step mother and not a label
but the mother she could turn to when complex life
needed to offer more than one voice of mom.

She went on to say
that's part of what she appreciated
about the talks he and she had.
He was, in a way,
the son she was never blessed with.
And everyone needed another mother,
who might be an aunt, a best friend's mom, someone.
And the other mother might need another son
or daughter. Someone to be proud of,
not more than their own,
but someone they could speak in their own voice too.

Each is blessed and honored:
son, daughter,
mother, father.
Each an other with whom
to compare
inside
to inside.
Blessing, oh indeed,
blessing for both.

Tuco spoke softly to the wind,
"blessings Arlu, blessings.
And blessings mom,
happy mother's day."