I hope you all had an important time with your mothers and a time remembering your mothers on Mother’s Day.  We did.  But, taking a look around here in Central Oregon, it’s pretty clear every day is Mother’s Day!   In fact, you have to look out where you’re walking or you may find yourself stepping on a Mom, which would not be a good thing on so many levels.  A couple weeks ago I dusted off my fly rod and headed out to Riley Ranch, on the edge of Bend, in search of serenity and maybe a trout.  I hiked down to a favorite stretch of the Deschutes River, selected a fly and spent a few hours smelling the Ponderosa Pines, listening for the calls of quail in the desert underbush, mesmerized by the swirling colors of river currents as they move from shallows to deeps, spilling over rocks.  By the way, have you ever stopped to stick your nose in a hole in the bark of a big Ponderosa?  Our daughter Erin turned me on to this on Mother’s day.  OMG!  Try it sometime.  You get this heavenly waft of fresh vanilla permeating your soul—transfixing you in a “I-never-want-to-leave-this-place” sort of way!  Just make sure your loved ones know where you are!

Anyway, I did catch and gently release several fish.  But, as I was whipping my fly out to that last riffle, bargaining with myself that this would be my very, very, very last cast before rushing home for dinner, my fly snagged a tree up the bank behind me. “Oh bother!” said I.  (A phrase I learned from Pooh Bear while reading with our grandson Jackson).  Which is considerably more genteel than “F-ing hare’s ear nymph!” but I digress.  I slowly made my way up the bank, squinting to find the nymph through my bi-focals.  I found it within reach, but, of course, relentlessly tangled with itself.  After several minutes of disentanglement angst, I freed the hare’s ear and collapsed my rod.  Then, pivoting to take my first step homeward bound, I realized I’d had an audience through the whole ordeal.  A Canada Goose mother was sitting on a full nest of pure white eggs not more than 4 feet away.  Holy goose down!  I totally could have stepped right on her the Mother, had I kept my eyes to the up.  But there she was down.  In all her mothering glory.

She just sat there (of course that’s kind of her job).  She moved not a feather. In all creation there is no blacker black than a goose neck nor any whiter white than the pristine shells of her eggs, newly laid.  And the one is clearly destined to protect the others at any cost in concert with a wicked bill and powerful wings positioned to whunk intruders within an inch of their lives!  All that said, I’m sure she was terrified.  The stare of her shiny black eyes was locked with mine.  The message was clear: “Back away from the embryos!”  I left, of course, pausing briefly for a goose selfie, grateful for the fierce gene of protection shared by all the Mothers of Earth to keep us safe.

Last week, I was witness to another Mother moment.  Visiting our daughters in Beaverton, Oregon, we got to experience the big back yard they recently inherited.  Prominent in the center is an immense Mimosa tree.  Still leafless, it presents huge scaffolding arms, laden with mossy greens and the oval scars of departed limbs.  Erin reports she’d mowed the lawn recently and, a couple days later, spied an untidy pile of wood chips on the new mown grass near the old Mimosa trunk.  That seemed odd.  After all, who knows what neighborhood bandit might have hopped the fence and dumped their chips?  But seriously.  A few days later she came upon the very same nuisance in the very same place.  Hmmmmm.  She raked it up again, still oblivious to the plot unfolding nearby, still unseen by human eyes.  Then, one morning, she and Amy noticed big wood chunks flying out of one of the huge branches out there, about head high.  As they had more time to watch over the next several days, they realized there was quite the carving operation underway.  And who were the yard bandits doing the damage?  They were a pair of Red-shafted Northern Flickers routing out a place for Mother Flicker to nest and fledge her young.  Wow!  Flickers have always been a favorite of mine.  In a surburban wood in the Pacific Northwest, if you hear the persistent drumming of a woodpecker, it is often a Flicker.  Every time they spread their wings, if you’re lucky enough to see beneath the shafts of winging feathers, you’ll get the measured flash of pink-orange-magenta, like a brilliant pulse of sunrise with every rhythmic sweep.

If you look at the photo, you will see the Flicker Mom poking out of the nest entrance. The front door is about two and a half inches in diameter.  Down in the lower right corner, you might see the blur of freshly excavated wood fibers, thrusted toward the lawn below.  This is the sacred debris of Motherhood in flicker-world.  As I watched this scene, taking photos from behind the fence, I imagined the smooth interior of a carefully lathed bowl, larger at the bottom like a pear, nested with eight white eggs.  Apparently, the mother and father of a flicker family share the incubation of eggs and other fledging tasks.  I know the holy work of the mother isn’t for females alone, I was a stay-at-home father after all.  I’m truly astonished by what it takes to build and maintain the safe cavities and incubators of our societies, then to lead forth and launch the newest chicks and goslings and the new intelligence.  On the face of it, it may look as though it’s a simple “keeping your goslings in a row” kind of thing.  In fact it’s all about providing for gentle humans and global genius to fledge civil economies to feed us all.

I’m never sure exactly how to honor mother-ness.  My own small experience will never suffice to fully engage any truly universal truth.  But, as often happens when we’re paying attention, my community provided a welcome writer’s prompt by way of a cruel, unwelcome event.  As we earnestly try to expand the reach of vaccinations in our  community’s COVID response, we are finally able to offer immunity to younger and younger people.  In our town this is taking shape in clinics, set up in the school gymnasiums of our local high schools.  The other day, as one of these clinics was starting to give COVID shots at Bend High School, a loud, angry mob formed across the street.  Among other things they were carrying anti-vaxxer signs, shouting down students and teachers as they arrived at school.  On line, the same people were attacking teachers and school administrators for violating civil rights, calling them Nazis and all manner of other unspeakable rudeness.  All over our democracy, we are experiencing this unschooled, anti-science, unsafety for our children—indeed all of us—when true safety, protection and a safe place from where to launch is what we crave.

My wife, Debbie, is among the most fierce protectors, one of the most intelligent advocates for well-ness, one of the most insightful students of humanity in the world, one of the most clear voices of conscience.  She is also one of the best Moms I know.  She has the shots.  She carries the certificate to prove her shots.  As, with so many of us, she was filled with happiness and gratitude, brought to tears when she was able to get that second poke in her arm.  I’m just saying there are so many great ways to be a mother and getting vaccinated (as it turns out) is, in the United States of America in 2021, is among the most radical and revolutionary.  On the occasion of the actual annual Mother’s Day, Debbie always points out that, indeed, she is not my Mother, and so it is neither my prerogative or responsibility to honor her.  What I say to her is “Na, na, na…whatever!”  She deserves this, even so.

Now, I certainly could leave it at this, but, as with nest-setting geese and cavity-boring flickers, actions are the proof.  So indulge me as I offer you one action you can easily take as moms and wannabe mothers, no matter your gender.  The fact is, it does take a village to fledge our youngsters and a good deal of our village fledgling time in this society is spent on school buses.  Especially if your family lives pay check to pay check or worse.  But you know, I’ve blathered on enough for one day, so I’ll introduce you to a thing you can do about school buses next time.  “The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round,” you know.  In the meantime, remember, every day is many things but among them each is a Mother’s Day.