I got to thinking about life again.  All mammalian life including humans is connected. A pulsating and living cord links mothers to children.  This cord is the lifeline between you and me today and our primal ancestors.

This cord is much, much bigger than the fetus it first begins to feed.  It conducts liquid nutrients from the mother to the babe. The organism grows to be much bigger than the cord and eventually the mother pushes the baby down that birth canal out into the world. I think most of us have never given it a thought. Little girls are rarely informed of changes other than breasts, widening hips and menstruation. The very necessary connection between their lives and the lives of the children they produce is not part of their picture until the cord must be cut.  The male input is so very tiny and brief as to make little impact other than starting life. The miracle is when that life connecting cord begins work.  That umbilical cord has stretched through time to allow our life to unwind and form new individuals in a chain connecting every one of us.

There cannot be an “un-bilical” cord. We are entranced by our wireless connections and constructs like the WEB and EBAY. We are amazed by other miracles of electronic wizardry.  But, they are nothing compared to conception, gestation, birth and cutting the cord leaving behind the mark of that connection in the simple belly button. We all have them. They, the belly buttons, are reminders of how we once were connected to another. These marks show us that we were nourished and brought through nine months of fishy existence to begin life in the air.

Our mothers are our link with life.  It has always amazed me how any man could not think of his connections with female life and what is owed to the mother who produced him.  I think girls know this instinctively if not through learning it at their mothers’ knees.  Girls are different and they know this because they will gift life on their children.

“Mother’s Day” is a sloppy and emotional celebration fostered by industries that make it imperative for us to spend in her honor. It was no real accomplishment to go to the drug store (as I did in my youth) to buy what I could barely afford of some sweet smelling water my mother could sprinkle on herself. I think I have since learned more of the meaning of motherhood and the significance of that cord she had inside her. It made it possible for me to grow until I was almost done and she pushed me out so eventually I could get up on my feet and be a man.

The longest umbilical cord in the world was the gift of life that began somewhere and goes on forever – if we don’t screw it up.  Thank you, Mother.