Mother's Day.............A time to remember Mother.
I had a wonderful Mother. She was always so well organized, well read, well prepared, well dressed, loving and giving. She had a card file for recipes, shopping lists, birthdays, everything... She didn't fit my idea of a woman who grew up on the farm, but I didn't know her very well, until I left home and I became a mother. I never knew until I was grown that she was the first child of her family to graduate from college. She went to school in a one room school but that never stopped her.
My phone was my link to mother. I called her with requests of many kinds, for recipes of butter cookies from long ago.
I called her when a 6 year old sat on a pencil on a school bus and the pencil lead broke off in her. I called her when I was so sick or so tired or so discouraged.
I wrote her cards...I took pictures...When I lived away from town, I came to see her but not nearly enough.
When I had not heard from her on the phone in a long time, my Father called me to tell me of my Mother's decline, of her massive loss of weight, of her depression after she lost both her daughter and then her granddaughter in such a short period of time. Of her loss of connecting with others. I rushed home to find a mother who no longer wanted to live. She had lost her way and was suffering so.
But I prefer to think of my mother as the delightful, cheerful mother who let me go shopping with her, as she tested new lipsticks, I tried on hats just across from her and as I modeled them with my silly little girlish charm, I was just the clown in the hat department. I catered the ones with flowers and large brims, but I was also in love with smaller hats looking like they had real bird nest in them! She looked so beautiful when she went to church, gloved and shining and perfect hair and that charming Southern smile that was so genuine.
I remember how she would let me lick that wonderful batter bowl. Or make "her kitchen" so dirty as I made iced cookies with more powdered sugar on the floor than on the frosty. How I could play the Beatles records and do a loud sing a long. How she never fussed and only laughed (at home, away from school) when she had to pick me up from kindegarten after I danced way too much and twisted for the whole class (after seeing Elvis sing on the Lawrence Welk Show)...
I know I was quite a lot of a child to raise from infancy to young adulthood. My imaginative attitude toward life, coupled with the Joy of Living must have challenged her beyond belief. My thinking more like a "boy" than a Girl. My wanting to change the world in one day!
Momma, you've been gone from this earth for over a decade. I miss you daily and remember you with much love and laughter. Thanks for giving me such a base of love and prayer, faith, and hope! For tolerating me. For tending me and mothering me past those first 18 years! You will always be perfect in my eyes, heart, soul and mind! You blessed me and many. You are not forgotten...
I love you and know that someday we will meet again... I warn you my earthly hands are rough and nails are dirty and I have the markings of a farmer woman....I went to live the life you left and our family has come full circle. I love farming. It is my calling and my passion. But I understand when you had to pick that cotton that made your hands bleed and hurt and your small back ache as you carried that ever increasing load. I know it must have been so hard for you, when what you wanted to do is fill your hands with a book or a pen and a pad of paper... What a sacrifice you made. What a woman you were. I thank you always.
You taught me love and sacrifice and joy and so much more..
