Precious Moments Poetry Contest-Echoes

Most of my precious childhood memories center around my mother. She’s the reason why I’m alive, why I smile, and why I cry. The memory of her, her strength, her compassion, and her integrity flow through my veins. She nurtured my love for words, and it’s her nurturing that echoes in the words I write. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I open the sewing basket, letting my eyes and hands run over the tools she once used—the scissors, the darning egg, the pins and pincushion, and spools of thread. I gaze at the metal spool-shaped bobbins remembering how, as a small child, I flushed them down the toilet creating quite a ruckus. I finger the thimbles recalling her numb fingers and hands. Despite her diminishing eyesight, she quilted until her last day, painstakingly feeling the fabric, cutting the shapes, and hand stitching the pieces together silently suffering from the pricks and misery her needle sometimes inflicted. When tiny drops of blood dripped from her fingers, nary a tear emerged from her eyes. I close the basket and walk through her sewing room, silence enveloping it. The faceless dress form patiently waits for her return, an unfinished garment draped over its shoulders. The sewing machine sits idle, its motor no longer whirring and the needle no longer punching through the fabric with its steady, rhythmic chuka, chuka, chuka sound. echoes pierce silence. the sound of mother’s spirit I know in my heart.