One Umbrella-Two Princesses

 

A trip into Brooklyn to visit my sister, both of us grandmothers now, both of us in love with our granddaughters . . . hoping they'll stay small a little longer. Can't you just eat up your grandkids? Don't they bring back so many memories of their parents when they were small? You know some day they'll be skipping out the door, just like their parents did and off to live their grown-up lives. That's why I intend to make lots of happy memories for them to keep . . . so they'll never forget how much they were loved.

More Precious Than Gold They Will Always Be . . . My Family

They are the center of my world. What ever I do revolves around the fact that I am a wife and mother. It's what I've wanted since I was young and the answer to my childhood prayers. Some people go through life without ever finding their soul mate. I can't imagine living all these years without mine.


Little did I know that fairytales only come true when you're willing to work at them. Keeping a marriage alive for 45 years, raising five children, marrying some off and letting some back in when their marriages ended, accepting their new partners and learning to love again. Disoriented when two of your kids "come out" . . . even though, if you really dig deep down, you can see the truth of their lives even clearer now. Watching your world fall apart when tragedy overcomes you, fear when illness strikes, learning to pick up all the broken pieces and start sewing the patches together again; these are parts of the fairytale, too. Losing your faith . . . finding your faith . . . losing your faith. But through it all, we stay connected. My circle of light may flicker at times but then . . .oh my, how bright it burns!

Love Is a Decision

So much of life centers on food . . . a primary need for our existence. Without it, we couldn't live and we learn that from the first suckle at our mother's breast or the bottle of warm milk. But much more is involved in those first experiences of nurturing and sustenance for the human child.

Few things can compare to the feelings transferred between mother and infant in those early moments and days of warmth and cuddling. Gazing into the eyes of your newborn, whose face was still unknown just days ago, is a mystical transport to wonderment and will begin to build the first layers of love's bonding.

Throughout life, the need for food of many kinds will be a driving force in self-fulfillment . . . the need for nourishment of body, mind and spirit. Yet, our children will always need the food of our love and acceptance throughout their lives, whether some believe it or not . . . they do. The roots of love grow deep and are buried in the souls of our offspring . . . ingested by every cell that remembers and long after we are gone they will remain.

I remember a phrase from long ago on our Marriage Encounter: "Love is a decision" and those words came alive when our kids were teenagers. Love isn't always easy when the rebels are roosting and your son's hair looks like a pink chicken is his mother. Love isn't easy when your fifteen year old daughter tells you she thinks she's pregnant. And where is love when a son calls his father sobbing he's been locked up in jail for drunk driving? Oh, where are those feelings we had for them when they were little and innocent? Well again and again, and again . . . those words ring true: Love is a decision." So after you rip out your hair and make strange promises to God, after you threaten to disown that mortification of a child . . . take a minute to breathe and look in the mirror . . . you might get flashbacks of your own rebel days . . . you might even say " This child is mine and I will love him through it" and make the decision to do what must be done . . . with love. Don't wait or turn away blind. Blunders are opportunities for growth . . . and to quote an old wise person: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!"

Joanne Cucinello

To Never Never Land

Keeper of Childhood Memories, come and visit me today.
Bring with you my pillow, where once
I lay my head in slumber, sweet and pure . . .
perhaps that long forgotten toy I held and cherished.

Let me touch them once again with searching fingertips,
recalling childhood comforts buried there.
Whisper in the long forgotten voices of my brothers and sisters,
small like me, so that their sounds might ring
a chime of recollection . . . echoes of our laughter long ago.

Bring me back the scent of home, my bed,
that favorite little chair or corner where I played . . .
my mother’s laughter and her lullabies,
the softness of her fingers on my heated brow.

Just one look at my reflection in my father’s eyes,
the smile upon his face and hands so strong
that lifted me high upon his shoulders,
where I could see the world.

Take me to that place where childhood past is kept,
safe from toil and fear . . .
the place where children’s spirits go to romp and play,
where every word once spoken still lives on
and floats through stars . . .
to Never Never Land.

Joanne Cucinello 1998

The Lord's Prayer

How precious is this?!

Where Have All the Children Gone?

I know so many of you must be thinking the same thing when you watch the news on TV or your computers . . . maybe even some are still getting the paper thrown at the doorstep every morning. Where have all the children gone? How can we save Childhood?
It's as if the Pied Piper has come to claim them for his own and lead them off to some strange Never Never Land promising to make them forget they were ever children. Little pseudo adults in Jr.High mimicking their sexy heroes and heroines on the Silver Screen and You Tube, feeling inept and unpopular if they aren't sexually active yet and taunting unyielding peers to jump with them to the rythmn of the Piper.
When a 13 year old can be so glued to her email and have so little self-love that she'd let herself be tormented for 5 weeks in the seclusion of her "privacy" . . . believing what is written to her about her "worthlessness" . . . so much so that she could end her own life! . . . Don't you want to SCREAM!! . . . IS ANYBODY HOME?!!
What kind of monsters are prowling in the dark of children's minds and on the Internet? What needs to change in family life and the loving of our precious children and how do we work together to find the answers?

Things I'll Never See

My heart still beats within my mother's womb.
I cannot leave this place...nor do I want to.
Inside these walls, safe and silent
I live and breathe in rhythm
with her slowly rising chest.
There is only warmth and purring water
circling round my head, comforting my skin.
I hear her voice and know her sighs
and there is peace when she lies down
... we dream.
I bounce with her laughter
as she tries to paint her toes
and curl up close when she cries.
Is she lonely for my face?
I'm afraid...fearful she won't know me
on the other side.
I don't want to leave this place
but there are things I'll never see in here....
my mother's eyes
her smile...
my own face in the mirror.


Joanne Cucinello
1997