Dairy Queen

It is starting to dawn on me. Maybe I haven't yet found my true calling because it's an outdated, medieval one?

I mean, some people are just born knowing from the pit of their appendix that they, the Kennedys are going to be wealthy politicians, FOR SURE.

Sure, maybe our calling is due to a life event; Rosa Parks ripped seams, she cross-stitched and hemmed and I don't think she was ever compelled to be a sock darner or had any idea in her early bus-riding career that she would be a national catalyst for change; a veritable institution. And I bet you--she was one HELL of a sock darner. It was a life event, the refusal to give up her seat on a bus that made her a civil rights activist.

Sometimes it takes a cataclysmic event to discover our true selves.

I am a born nursemaid. The pump-in-style sucked out the knowledge that Oh My God--I am a human Dairy Queen. When angered I don't give the "cold shoulder"; instead--I serve a soft blizzard with the "extra" in a steel cup on the side. I love to nurse and I would do it forever if I could. I've had visions of renting out my nursing size H's to celebrities and dignitaries and the wealthy. But then the harsh reality of the situation sets in. A job so intimate exposes a mom to the same working conditions the assistants of the entitled endure; being oncall 24x7 and untimately not being there for your own family. Depriving your own child of the milk made just for her --for financial gain would launch your very soul into a shadowy and sad world--the world where bad parents go--to stay. One that most of us need not enter for that particular misdeed in this age of Advanced Similac.
But maybe what it is--this "calling" to breastfeed is just a marker of my genetic predisposition to bearing and caring for children. That feeling of birthing Whoozyerbaby , no drugs--from deep within was so satisfying that I don't need another calling. It calmed me and elevated me, made me a better mother--one that visited the underworld through pain and dragged her daughter up and did what a divine entity--the goddess Demeter-- could not for Persephone--I brought my daughters home to stay---winter to winter, year after year. It is my greatest hope that my daughters outlive me and that I grow wizened with age and experience.

Demeter has NOTHING on us mortal moms...




This woman did what I think any mortal mom would do. She nursed the babies that needed her. Perhaps that's all any displaced modern nursemaid could hope to provide; sustanence for a hungry baby if ever one needs her.