HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARGEAUX! AND LOVE AND PASSION POEM #25

Today is Margeaux Helena's 6th birthday! We named her after my late mother, Margaret and my mother-in-law Helen. Margeaux was the only child to arrive as a newborn...2 weeks old. We had to wait until she got to exactly 5 lbs before she could come home--she was born with drugs in her system and was low birth weight. She did go to a foster home for a few days right out of the hospital while we were jumping through home inspection hoops, updating our adoption paper work and so on.

The Social Worker arrived with her in a car seat and a little diaper bag, that was all she had. She was so tiny wrapped in moutains of pink blankets. The Social Worker put her in my arms and said see ya! I was stunned! What! where are you going so fast I said. She looked at me and firmly said: "you are her mother, you will be fine". And out the door she went. In that moment the real love affair began.

Nikki Giovanni
ALWAYS THERE WILL BE CHILDREN

and always there will be children

there will be children in the heat of day
there will be children in the cold of winter

children like a quilted blanket
are welcomed in our old age

children like a block of ice to a desert sheik
are a sign of status in our youth

we feed the children with our culture
that they might understand our travail

we nourish the children on our gods
that they may understand respect

we urge the children on the tracks
that our race will not fall short

but children are not ours
nor we theirs they are future we are past

how do we welcome the future
not with the colonialism of the past
for that is our problem
not with the racism of the past
for that is their problem
not with the fears of our own status
for history is lived not dictated

we welcome the young of all groups
as our own with the solid nourishment
of food and warmth

we prepare the way with solid
nourishment of self-actualization

we implore all the young to prepare for the young
because always there will be children

Rome 12 November 1974