My mother and wolves

I am posting a series of vignettes relating to the joys and pain of motherhood.
Thank you mom for showing me strength, independence and kindness throughout the years.

Part One

My mother makes crepes for breakfast and turns on the fireplace when it gets chilly. Each cat sleeps in its own bed. Their fur rests in the warm corners of this house. 

Spring has appeared out of the shadows and every day I feel sharper like the photo of the wolves hanging on my bedroom wall. They are lumbering forward on their long limbs, they are certain that they are moving. They look focused, impressive with their purpose driven lives. They need to eat and sleep.

Something about going to Iraq to work as an embedded journalist feels just as primal.

But I am not sure footed, just more focused. As everyone who has ever faced death, we truly live when we hit that edge, when we watch what we would miss in those spaces we love to deny time and time again.

But we live in other spaces too, huge spaces that overflow and then feel small.

My mother smiling in the kitchen, ignores the ruckus of my brother, father and I flinging insults in the living room. She quietly cuts and cooks and cleans and it is purpose driven, it is beautiful to see her there in what may be my last sweet memory.