One player is "mother". The other players are the "children". To begin the game, the mother stands at one end of a room and turns around facing away, while all the children line up at the other end. The children take turns asking "Mother, may I ____?" and makes a movement suggestion, like "Mother, may I take five steps forward?" The mother either replies "Yes, you may" or "No, you may not do that, but you may _____ instead" and inserts her own suggestion. The players usually move closer to the mother but are sometimes led farther away. – Wikipedia (“Mother May I’ Game Rules)
My mother never intentionally meant to harm me. She may have done things that made me move farther away from her, or made unfavorable suggestions. But note that the child has a role in this game too. The child can ask to move forwards many steps, openly, or very few, guardingly. I am working my way towards being healed. I hope you are too, with your splinters, because we all have them. It’s just that most of us get caught in the trap of thinking and talking about them, instead of just getting them out.
I’m done asking my mother for permission to love her or be loved by her. What’s that you say? “You kinda don’t have a choice now, Tony. She’s gone.” If only that were so. The truth is that Death does not end the conversation. It only starts a new one. Now I only ask her one thing: “May I?”
And as I pray for help sometimes to pull those splinters out, and feel the angels come to minister to my wounds? I feel another presence there, too. She has soft brown hair and a sweet smile. When she was little she would play hide in seek in her favorite dress and give herself away by giggling too much. Then she grew up, tall and stunningly beautiful, and the world began to take advantage of her, and she let it. Until she couldn’t take it anymore and lashed out at it and lost her way a bit.
Heaven has removed my mother’s splinters, of this I am sure, and from the other side of that veil, I can feel her now, being the mother she always wanted to be. Because mother’s never really leave us, and they never stop tending to the “boo-boo’s”, especially the ones they themselves have caused us.
And if I wait patiently enough? I can feel her kissing each and every one of them, just before she whispers “Alllll better now.”
