Longer than the Road by wind rider

Longer than the Road

Longer than the Road

I reach out a hand and touch the petals carefully with the tip of my forefinger. So soft, so delicate; and like every time before, the star-shaped milky-white flower upon my touch – the touch of a mother. (Blessed by the Earthqueen herself for mothers and small children, it would suffer the touch of no other.) My vision is blurred again, and I can feel tears leaking out and down the edges of my eyes. I am still a mother in Mother Earth’s eyes. But the reassurance – the latest of so many – does not soothe me. The same question still repeats in my mind, echoing answerless: Why did they leave me? Why did he take them away from me? Are they not mine, not only his? The fruits of my womb, of my labourous delivery and years of nurturing?

Countless times have I visited familiar gardens bearing this flower since they left, doing just the same. The Baby-flower, we named it, specially created and blessed by Yavanna to honour and celebrate the softness and purity of mothers and their newborn and toddlers, after the birth of the first Firstborn babe in Aman. My mother told me this when I was small, when she was bathing me using soap scented with oil from this flower, and I told my children that similarly. I wish I had a daughter, so she could feel what I feel — and perhaps, just perhaps, she would not leave me like her brothers did…?

I choke, but the deep ache I used to feel on the thought of never having any daughter is not there anymore. I have my sons, seven of them; absent, but still mine, and nobody – nothing – can refute that, separate them from my spirit. Wherever they are and whatever they do, they are still mine – and still alive. I may be ashamed of their actions, but not the beings that are my children.

A mother never stops loving her flesh-and-blood. When Arda is made anew, I shall be there to greet my babies again, and the fragrance of the Baby-flower will grace their bodies again for the second time.

A mother always hopes for her children, hopes for the best.