Through a Glass Darkly.

We none of us know our mothers.
Hidden behind our expectations,
Snared in our sense of entitlement,
Their lives are not their own.

Too late we wonder who they are,
Question the things which we took for granted,
Stare open mouthed at what should have been obvious,
And find a space to understand and forgive.

They did things for reasons which we never knew,
Carried a burden of joy and pain that we never saw
And set things aside or took them on for our benefit.
They lived in a world that we only visited.

Peering back in time through the frosted glass,
Its surface dampened by our own warm breath,
We can finally wipe away the mist and see the truth.
It wasn’t all about us.