it was my bday yesterday, and seeing as  this is a day that celebrates my entrance to the planet- and my lil brother has already written such an eloquent piece already honoring my mom..and  i am  a lil lazy …Today i offer you this ode  for my mom..,by patrick ..

..thanks patrick, its beautiful..and thankyou mom. i love you.

  from may 24th 2006-wildlotus by patrick creelman

It was my mother’s birthday yesterday. I spoke to her on the phone just after she arrived home from a bike ride in the rain… She lives in a big beautiful old house in the woods of Whistler, Canada. The house is tucked into the tree’s so that you feel like you are in a tree house of sorts. I grew up in the house with my sister Allison, my dad John, our random pets (including a family of rascally racoons) and a few dopey black bears, and of course the rest of extended community. my mom opened our house to the world, and for most of our friends it was head quarters.

My mom is quite a woman. Although she has a very hard time talking about herself, and dreads being celebrated by others, I want to share a few of my mothers great encounters.

When I was moving to Hong Kong 4 years ago my mom told me a quick story about her first visit here. Her mother,Val

(as in Valentine… born on Feb. 14th), took her and her sister to Hong Kong on a shopping trip (my response to that: a shopping trip? do people still do that sort of thing?) and on her way from NYC to Hong Kong she ended up sitting next to two well spoken, well dressed Nepalese men. The younger of the two ended up talking to my mom the whole flight over (back then I can only imagine the flight took like 98 hours… but the seats were probably huge!) So… as it goes, the men got off in HK as well and invited my mom, her mom, and her sister to dinner, and to their hotel. They didn’t end up joining them, but found out soon after that it was the Prince and his cousin (? mmm… i think cousin???) of the Nepalese Royal Family. interesting times. Nonetheless, when the tragedy happened in the Royal house those few years ago my mom had a crazy flash back to that flight. So sad what’s happening there now. Let’s pray for peace in the Himalayan Kingdom.

… One weekend in 1969 while my mom was at college her friend asked her to go ‘camping’ for the weekend. She accepted, and about 12 hours later she found herself in a backwaters of up state new york amoungst a crowd of 500 000 people listening to the likes of Jimi Hendrix (my personal fav), the grateful dead, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and the list goes on and on, but you all know about that. She had arrived at woodstock. Maybe you were there with my mom. dunno. anyway. for a kid of the seventies & eighties, having a mom who was at woodstock was a huge hit! * did you know the great yoga master Sri Swami Satchidanda opened the festival? What a ride.

anyway… later in life, when I was 4 years old, my mom took her first trip without my dad, my sister, or me. She flew to London to visit her friend (can’t remember her name… let’s call her Lara) Lara. Lara was a writer, and it turned out she had just received her first big gig for a music magazine called RollingStone. Hmmm. plot thickens. On a random tuesday night in downtown London, Lara takes my mom out on her work trip to interview an up and coming musician from Jamaica. Sitting backstage after the show listening in on Lara’s as she interviewed BOB Marley, my mom swears she didn’t smoke any dope. o.k. who would? … exactly.

even tho this is a day late, Happy Birthday Mom mom!

Technorati Tags: bio, family, taintme, tannerc