Reflections VI, D – Mother’s Day: by Tom McClellan

A guest post for Easter from writer, IPM poet and essayist Tom McClellan

Dear Son,

You’ve done yourself proud at Officer Training School.  Acing your course work and being the first to be selected Group Leader—Congratulations!  You said you want to adopt me as your second father—You make me proud to think of you as a son – “My Son the Marine, Warrant Officer Burton.” That has a nice ring to it.

Official spring began two months ago, about the time real spring had peaked in an explosion of azalea blooms along Turtle Creek.  Now spring continues cool and wet through the Ram and into the Fish.

Now shines the sun of spring,

And honeysuckle’s scent

Soaks air washed by the rain.

The proof of God’s as plain

As sunlight through the leaf

Exposing cell and vein.

…

Your mother and I had our first date on Mother’ Day, 1979.  We ate at a Mexican restaurant and saw the movie “All That Jazz.”

Over the next year Carolyn became the Home I so much needed.  We were married, as you probably remember, about one week before our first grandchild, your daughter, arrived.

Before we were married, Carolyn asked me if I was in love with her.  Being in the process of recovery from a passionate relationship that had ended in divorce and, for me, a trip to the madhouse, I had no trust in being in love.  I told her, “No, but give me five years and I’ll fall in love with you.”

It didn’t take that long though.  We went to a dance some months later, and the memory of Carolyn in a sunshine yellow dress with flowered wrap—she’d made both herself—head thrown back, abandoned to the music—That is a memory I’ll carry with me into eternity.

In His Love,

Tom

This piece was excerpted from Mr. McClellan’s memoir: “Reflections from Mirror City”.