Mother's Day

Powerful word - mother - I have 2 - well, actually three if you count my HyphenMother - my ex-step-mother-in-law ( 5 hyphens!).
I have a mother who raised me from the age of 1 year 4 days. A witty, charming, beautiful woman with whom I've never felt a connection. Admiration, envy, warmth but not a connection. I have, or rather, had, a birth mother. She died when she was 49 , leaving behind 5 other children who didn't know about me, her first-born, until a few years ago but who have embraced me as one of their own. I think I would have liked her - she was hard-working, hard-living and down-to-earth. My 1/2 siblings sure loved her. When they first saw me, walking into a food court at exactly the same age she was when she died, looking so much like her, it was almost heart-breaking to watch their faces - crumpled, relieved - little children again who'd found the mother they thought they'd lost.
I am a mother - six times over - loved pregnancy - feeling fecund and ripe and fulfilled - loved labour - loved newborns - loved toddlers - loved it all - loved them all - love them and even like them now that they are grown up. And they never miss an opportunity to tell me they love me.
So, Mother's Day resonates on many levels.
Happy Mother's Day - to birth mothers, adopted mothers, young mothers, tired mothers, SIDS mothers, mothers whose children have died before them, all mothers.
You are the heart and soul of mankind.