What to do about Mother: A Short Story of Self-Discovery
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We were all outside doing whatever suited us – playing, fighting, selling, buying, cheating, preaching, stealing, eating, praying, walking, running, saving, destroying, keeping, loving, hating, throwing, catching, working, resting, giving, taking – and anything else that satisfied our needs, real or imagined. While all these self-satisfying individual contemporaneous activities were going on, Mother lay inside, full of life but motionless, helpless, and non-existent or only fleetingly present in our minds. So, as long as this situation persisted, Mother was just a convenience, a name-tag for furthering our needs in the Neighborhood. Mother’s life – her contributions to all the other neighborhoods and her standing in the eyes of other mothers - has enabled us to be envied as her children. We feel very proud to be Mother’s children – our manner of speech, attitudes, the games we play and how we play clearly identify us with her. She has provided for us in ways that no other mother in all the neighborhoods has been able to do for their own children. Some of Mother’s friends have provided well for their children too but nothing comes close to what our own mother has done for us. So with all that she has done for us, why are we, her beloved children, playing outside without any concern for her well-being?
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About the Book
Mother has always been known for her generosity but her critics fault her for things her children did and do in her name. Her past was marked by trials and tribulations; the present, by family squabbles; and her future well-being can only be determined by what her children choose to do. Mother is used metaphorically in this book to denote that which gives a community of people or peoples their common identity, sense of pride and what, in the end, will define their destiny. There are forces at play in Mother’s Neighborhood to covertly or overtly assume, maintain and perpetuate their power and control over the community by exploiting deeply-held traditional beliefs and imagined fears. Diametrically opposed to these forces are those who believe in using the immense gifts that Mother has been blessed with for the good of all her children. As the leaders and surrogates of these two camps bitterly fight it out to gain the attention and support of the larger population, Mother suffers immensely from physical neglect and she is deeply saddened by lapses in her children’s ability to recognize the fact that whatever they aspire to be or the utopia they so fiercely seek is, indeed, within reach – if only they will stop for a moment to take a look at each other in the eye where they are most likely to find themselves. This book forces readers to rethink and reanalyze popular refrains that have all worked together to turn them into mere onlookers of dramas that affect their very lives. Mother’s children had a choice to make about their Neighborhood – so do you about yours.
About the Author
Stephen K. Gozo, Ph.D. is a scientist by training and he practices his trade bringing life-enhancing medicines to patients. He is interested in improving the human condition by means within in his skills and natural dispositions. This is his first literary work in line with that desire.