Skip to main content

hawk


When Owen was four years old we saw a guy at a gas station. The guy wore a white t-shirt, beat up blue jeans, a styled hair cut and drove a motor cycle. He looked pretty cool. When I got back in the car after filling my tank, Owen said, "Mom I like the way that guy looks, could I look like that?". Of course I went home gave him a pair of jeans, a white t-shirt and gelled up his hair. He looked in the mirror and nodded. With an air of satisfaction he announced, "Now I need a new name". He thought for a minute and said, "Hawk Raider...my other name is Hawk Raider". Of course my heart swelled with pride. There is nothing I admire more in a person than the willingness to look deep within the crazy disguise of being human and find that authentic sense of who s/he really is and then SHINE with abandon. This weekend Hawk ran into his brother and namesake. You can see his totem in the background. Owen borrowed my camera and slowly, with patience and gentleness, he stepped forward.He took this picture from 5 feet away. After several minutes of contemplation the hawk took flight and Hawk nodded after him, turned and walked on with that same look of satisfied self awareness.
I am so fortunate to be his mother.
Labels:

Comments

Wind said…
I have never known a mama who follows her children's lead more, listens so carefully, hears the requests, inner thoughts, subtle hints of desire or need, and then does everything possible to bring that into reality, make it visible and affirm them more than you.
These children are so fortunate to call you mama.

-Wind
September 2, 2009 at 9:06 PM
Angelina Lloyd said…
My beloved Wind...any compliments on my parenting from you are deeply treasured. You continue to inspire and educate me in the art and adaptations of motherhood. I love and adore you!
September 3, 2009 at 7:13 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

the way of the sunflower

A few weeks ago, I sat holding a sunflower seed in my hand, just prior to the mouth popping, mastication phase, when it's perfect elegance floored me.  I stared in awe at the tiny seed nestled in my palm and saw it, in all of it's possibility, for the first time.  A flower, a million seeds, a million flowers.  Each unique, each the same.  And suddenly I was dumbfounded by the arrogance of human. A small seed, with no big beefy brain to catalogue, categorize, prioritize, conceptualize, quantify, qualify, justify and deify, had within it the flower it could become.  Dissect the seed and there's no  flower, nor any glimmer of the life that will unfold when the seed surrenders to soil, light, water. I wondered. What arrogant assuming is it, to think, with our over indulged brains and narcissistic lens of "self", that we need "do", "think", "struggle", "fight", "hustle", "cajole" and otherwise dance our way...
1 comment
Read more