On a wall of my house is a picture of three owls, a hand-embroidered creation in a small blue IKEA frame. My mom would develop artistic obsessions — one of these, in the early 1970s, was embroidery — and she stitched this picture during that phase.
One of my friends observed that the three owls resemble a mother and her two kids. Whether that was Mom’s conscious, or subconscious, choice, I don’t know. But she did tend to find things that had a “mom & babies” theme. Even when I was in my 50s, Mom seemed to view me as “her baby” in some ways. I suppose that is not that unusual among parents and adult children, no matter how old they are.
In this particular picture, the “mama owl” (if you do indeed perceive her that way) is in the middle, encircled by a hollow in the trunk of a leafy tree. She and my sister (the owlet to our left) are huddling together, heads & shoulders side by side.
Whereas the other owlet, eyes a bit off-kilter, is peering towards them from her perch on a nearby branch to the right. One guess “whooo” that quirky owlet represents in this scenario!
* A group of Owls is known, curiously enough, as a Parliament. We will revisit this at a future point.
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