Mothers' Hearts

It's been a long week and I feel more like showing than saying. I made this quilt a couple of years ago after I found some beautiful fabric with moms and babies from all over the world. Each mom and baby is framed by fabric that looks like it might have come from their part of the world. I did actually use some woven fabric that I bought in Guatemala when I was adopting my son Danny. You can kind of see the machine quilting, it's all hearts. I have this quilt hanging in my clinic. I see families from many parts of the world, and that's part of the reason I made it, but mostly it's to symbolize that mothers' hearts are all the same. There is so much suffering in the world today, and I think that many people numb themselves to it by telling themselves that those people are different. But I know, absolutely know, that mothers in refugee camps in Darfur, mothers in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Iran, mothers everywhere, love their children as fiercely as I love mine. Fathers too, but there weren't fathers in the fabric.

Some pictures to go with the quilt--three of my kids on a recent trip to St. Louis, a baby Emporer penguin who dwarfs his mother, at the St. Louis zoo, and my grandmother cuddling my baby Radar.