Legacy: Lessons Learned from Some Women in My Life

This week's Art Stew prompt was to do something inspired by International Children's Book Day.

Today is also Dia da Mulher Moçambicana (Mozambican Woman's Day). 

So, I'm incorporating them both to write a little something about two of the women who've had a tremendous influence on my life: My mother, and Laura Ingalls Wilder (even though neither of them are Mozambican, but I live in Mozambique, so it works. Somehow).

Legacy

I leaned against the curve of my mother's belly,
Unborn feet pummeling my back,
And heard, yet again, the invitation of those opening lines:

'Once upon a time, sixty years ago, 
A little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, 
In a little gray house made of logs.'

And no-one knew, there, in that pregnant space
Of warm hearth and lamp glow,
All that those simple words would one day bring to pass.

Of the traveling to see
The wide, unknown places of this world.
From wagon beds to airplane wings,
The wonder of new lands still the same.

No-one recognized
That the memories we made
Would someday be the smile
On a traveler's weary face;
The treasures that she carried
To live in a new land.

No-one considered
Too long or too critically
On the lessons being taught
Throughout those winter nights:
Of ingenuity
And how to face adversity with faith
And how to always hope
And not give in.

No-one thought
Of the future birthing;
The seeds of strength and wonder
Planted, reaped:
A new life being formed
Of homely things.

Just a child and her mother
And a woman's timeless words,
Conceiving of the future
One page at a time.