THE NARRATIVE ARC
A Mother of a Northern Lights Show
We are all mothers of something
There was the mother of a show last night. The Northern Lights played across the sky in a display the likes of which I have never seen before. And possibly never will again. If I hadn’t known what it was I might have thought the world was coming to an end. The aliens were arriving.
Mother. I used it there in a way that describes magnificent, indescribable, most fantastic.
When we think of mothers we are usually thinking of children in the same sentence. As in giving birth to or caring for them.
And yet we aren’t all destined to be mothers in that way. Not all of us want to. Not all of us can.
Somehow the term mother has taken on a much wider berth. You could have a ship that is the mother of the fleet, one mother of an earthquake and even a motherfucker is something of weight.
So when I think of the term mother it’s a word that carries significance. If we aren’t caregivers for children we can still be mothers in a whole other way.
Motherhood in its traditional meaning is a word that smacks of generosity, guilt, and unconditional love. If you give birth, adopt or foster children, if you care for any person in the way that…
