I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. - Louisa May Alcott

I had a terrific time at the Woman to Woman conference. Thank you.:-)

This post isn't about that. :-) It's about a project I just started. If I'm GOOD, I'll be done in time for Mother's Day. And then, if I'm very good, I might send it in to "someone" and try to get it into book form.

Which is why I hesitate, but decide to do this anyway. I thought I'd share the prologue with you.

* * *

Mom

She was a heartbeat. The whole world. Everything I knew.

Then, I was born and she was my life: food and drink, shelter and clothing. Love, always love.

Soon, I was moving and becoming more independent and she became Mama. Mama had to follow a trail of crumbs from the kitchen to my brother’s bedroom to find me sharing chocolate chip cookies with Scott in his crib. Mama danced with me in the Big Room of a house in Southern California.

Then, she became Mommy. Mommy taught me how to read, heard my young ambitions of being everything. Mommy got Scott to quit pulling chunks of hair out of my head. Mommy shook her head when I persisted in tying every stray hair ribbon into bows. Mommy saw me write my name in every dusty surface in the house. Then under my name, she would write “needs to dust.”

I don’t remember if I ever took the hint.

As the years passed, she was called Mom. Mom taught me many things, including lectures that we pretended to number – though all of them were Lecture Number Twenty-Three -– how to do my make-up, why Dad was really the boss in our house, and why she changed her hair color so frequently.

When I was eight years old, my brother and I were presented with a baby sister, Wendy. When Wendy joined us, I began intentionally studying this woman I called Mom, but the rest of the world called Alice. I watched her closely. Listened intently to what she said. Asked her why she said what she had. Why she did what she did…and how. From her, I learned much about being a mom, a wife, a professional, an artist, and, above all, about being a woman who seeks after the Lord God Almighty with everything she has.

I’ve decided, after three decades of study, that I wanted to share Mums with the world. Oh, I still call her Mommy, on the rare occasion when I feel at a very low place. Or Mum. Ma'i-ma'i, too. She has a lot of names in my lexicon.

But she’ll always be Mom. My mom. Blessed at the city gates and controversial on the local airwaves. I thought I’d share her with you.