Dierdre Hade

In loving memory
of my Mother
Katherine Blumer Hade

My mother, a tall woman, large-boned, like a cedar tree, sang country music and told stories of the "old days."  They were "just plain hard," she said. She would tell old time stories, as if the stories themselves were living people you had to get to know before they died. She played guitar, wrote songs, and was an American Spirit. She grew up on a farm in Missouri during the depression and loved telling us about "the time the rain stopped short at the fence line watering the neighbors crops and leaving us dry and near destitute."

I asked my mother about God and she threw me outdoors and told me not to come back in until I knew the answer.  I headed down to the woods, a forest of evergreens at the end of the baked red clay road we lived on in North Carolina. There was nothing to do but look and listen. The only sounds were the bees and wind in the grasses, like a drowning march to nowhere. Thus, my mother had guided me into the true spiritual experience, boredom. God is an eye in the center of boredom.  When I heard the trees speak and saw an Angel hiding in those trees, I could go back and confidently tell Mama that I did find God.  She'd let me back into the house, where I would stand with my shirt up over my head like a sail towards freedom and feel the cool Frigidaire air conditioner pour salvation all over my overheated little body. And that was God.

I am the weed of immigrant backgrounds, Irish Catholic, English Protestant, German, Scotch, Basque (my mother said I was the gypsy), Lakota Sioux and Cherokee. My great grandfather was a circuit riding Baptist preacher. My scientist father was a self-proclaimed atheist.

 It was my mother who opened the doorway into my self as a spiritual being. I am ever grateful for her gift to me and I dedicate my healing path to my mother.

Deirdre
August 8th, 2008

Excerpt from Deirdre's forthcoming book