(no subject)
I look at my mother & my mother does not look like me. I look just Chinese, shiny black patent leather hair, so smooth & razor-edged. She has thin, frizzy hair like plants by the river where ducks swim through. Her white skin is like apricots in the summer. Mine like almond milk. Always.
Her eyes are bluish, like a mix of paints
w/ green. Mine are dark like stones
where tears fell. We see, when we look out
from the river's bridge, the same hungering water,
the same sharing sky w/ clouds, the same gray fish
huddled in the reeds like a handful of coins.
We feel the ripple & shock of love,
the gratitude of arms o p e n e d, unbundling me
in the world. How she gathered me into her own.
When I ask her why, she says she wanted me.
The world between us cannot take that away.
She says this:
If I give you an apple,
You will eat it at once.
If I give you a seed,
You can grow your own tree.
So it comes to this: She took seed
& gave it soil not its own.
She took seed & grew shelter. She took
seed & made me a tree where I might have been
a dry & stunted plant clinging to the side
of a dry little house. Or worse.
But what we do not see together
when we look out at the river
is the annotation of aloneness
for the mother I will not know,
for the seed,
for the tree in China.
-Tina Cervin
November is national adoption month. That was a Chinese Proverb I had to read at a banquet to benefit & promote adoption which was held at the Church in the Middle of the Block. Really liked it so i thought id just stick it in here.
Also, if anyone is interested in attending a Christmas show, my theatre group, the Tom Riley Theatre Ensemble, is performing at the very same Church in the Middle of the Block on December 17th, 6pm & 8pm. To obtain tickets, all you have to do is buy a toy & bring it w/ you to the show. There will be a truck outside where you can hand your toy over & in exchange, you will receive your ticket. The toy will be sent to a child who isn't used to having presents for Christmas. 1 toy for 1 ticket. But children 14 & younger get in free since the performance is about making Christmas brighter for children that aren't so lucky. Hope to see you there; TELL YOUR FRIENDS! :)<3