#MOMs

[inbabylontheywept]

my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

she then told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and go to heaven, and be able to talk to the worms face to face. that i'd be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident, driven only by excessive Love, and that she was positive they would forgive me because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

[celesse]

Love you, Mom 💐💖

[theotherendcomics]

[hucktuh]

Horny Karla 🙌🏾🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[amnhnyc]

🐘 Nothing quite compares like the bond between a mother and her child. Related African elephant (Loxodonta africana) females and their young live in tight-knit families led by a matriarch. This older, female leader helps the group survive by sharing her hard-earned wisdom, like remembering the locations of  watering holes in times of drought. 

Elephant family groups grow very attached. Mothers are extremely protective of their calves, and younger females act as attentive “babysitters.” These giants show their affection through touch, especially with their trunks, as well as through gesture and sound. Individual elephants remember their feelings for one another even when separated for years. Learn more about these incredible animals in the Museum’s exhibition The Secret World of Elephants.

Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons 

[pineappleciders]

let's appreciate the omori mothers!!! to all moms, past or present, you do so much. thank you❤️

[high-quality-tiktoks]

reassurance but the opposite actually

[nickpeppermint]

What's up MOTHER lovers

[animentality]

[psmom04]

Me and my beautiful girls 🩷

[catsofyore]

Smoosh. 1937. Source.

[incognitopolls]

"Mother" can of course include adoptive or foster parents, step-parents, etc.

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[one-time-i-dreamt]

Alex Hirsch sent me a thank you package for mentioning him. It was a bunch of decorative lights and electrical parts. I had to explain to my moms who he was and they were very proud.

[foodbucketjesus]

.: to whom it may concern

[thegoodmorningman]

You better have a Good One, Mom. (Or else...)