Skip to main content

My mom...my life bearer


   It is no competition between kids on how they honor their mother best. It is the end result that we honor them. Lately, I have been trying to keep myself from saying, "I am lucky" when I know I should be saying, "I am blessed." So, I am blessed because I have a blessing: my mother.
  When it comes to my mom, my words couldn't guild enough. My words are bleak and grey and completely inadequate. It isn't that they aren't flowery or euphoric to hear, it is that they aren't enough. Let me tell you about my mom...
   My mother married at the age of 20. He was 29. She had her first child, my brother, when she was 24. She had her second child, me, at the age of almost 30. Her husband wasn't the one she always dreamed about in her fantasy life as a young girl. In fact, as much as I love my father, he wasn't the best model of a husband. But, he loved her...and she him. (This is about her btw. ;-) 
   For the next 29 years, my mother raised some damn good kids. Her son was brilliant and her daughter was an entertainment. But, it would be a loss of her son that would push her closer to the edge of perhaps losing all sense of personal identification. However, she fought. She fought hard to get out of the torment that wanted to control her because she knew that she had one more here.
   My mom was stuck. She was stuck with me. The one who is marked by her independence. The one who has a tendency not understand emotional connections. The one who is more of her opposite. However, she fought. She fought hard to break my shell because she knew that the only way for either of us to truly survive the death of her son and my brother was to interlock our souls and become true friends.
   My mom gave me life. But, the more important thing is that she gave me friendship. Life without true friends or someone who will come get you, while you are in the middle of nowhere, with no car, and broken and screaming because of someone else's inability to be kind...that's not living. My mom is my definition of life. She gave it me, but above all: she gave it meaning.

I heard it once said that all kids will think their mother the best at one point in their life...well, for me, my mother is the best at all points.
My mother: my North Star, my compass, my guide through the bog, my one, constant saving grace. I love you, mom--more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today, more forever and always. -2014
   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tiger must stay in your backpack...

   I'm not that parent. The one who gloats too much, and shows off all the pictures. The parent who relays every detail of their kid to let others know how incredible I think they are. Perhaps it is a flaw. Who knows. And I also pride myself in not being a helicopter parent. I teach and let go. I discipline and let go.    And I thought I would be ready for this: first day of Pre-K. I have been very positive and uplifting and have wanted my son to be extra ready to go to school. We have talked about it for months! I am ready... Or so I thought.  This morning, as white boy was leaving to take them to daycare, he said to Owen, "You can't take Tiger to school tomorrow or he will have to stay in your backpack, so do you want to take him to daycare today?" I thought little of it, but as Owen threw him down on the ground and turned to head out the door, my throat hitched. "Are you sure you don't want to take him today?" He said no. It was a sense of finality.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

60 years ago is not the 1940s

  When you are born, you are lucky to get one day a year to celebrate just you. Well, you and all the others born on that day. When you become a mother or father, you get another day for just you. Sometimes those days come when you are not ready, and some come when you wish they wouldn't.   Today, 60 years ago, my mother was born. A date that means littler to most people I know than to her or me. As we age, and my mother is no different, our birthdays become just another cycle of the rising of the sun and a following of the moon. Nothing to make a big to do of.   My mother enjoys subtly. She can be dramatic but embraces the subtle acknowledgement of herself. She has ALWAYS placed herself second and counted the accolades of her children as if they were her own. That was one thing my mother NEVER lacked: humility. Which made me often sad she didn't get more than 2 days a year commemorating her.   Mom, I know I've come short. I know that I have openly and often faile...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sacred Requiem

  He handed me the hymnal and asked me if I was ready...if I could do this. To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never planned a funeral, and even if I had imagined planning one it sure wasn't this early in life and it sure wasn't for my only brother, my only sibling. At 25, I felt like a little child getting left behind in a sea of strangers. I was terrified.   2 days prior, my heart stopped beating. 2 short days before this, my peaceful world collided with the dark. And now I had to prepare for the world to say goodbye to greatness. The tree fell in the woods and the world shook with its sudden end. And we, as the collective, needed to imagine that very tree as the beautiful piece of woodwork it now was and bow to it's new exulted shape.   I wasn't sure how to plan a requiem. But, it had been placed in my hands and I wanted to give him the best I could. He deserved it. He deserved life...to live...to breathe still and chase every dream he thought into...
Post a Comment
Read more