"There's nothing like a mama-hug." ~Terri Guillemets
http://youtu.be/irNOZLUuR_k [Good Mother/Jann Arden]
"She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along." ~Margaret Culkin Banning
When I was a little girl, I always wondered what kind of mother I would be? It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to find that out. I practiced and practiced with my dolls, mothering them the way my mother did with me. I kissed them and gently coddled them. I scolded them when they misbehaved. I tenderly put them to bed at night, making sure to cover them with the blanket so they wouldn’t catch cold and hugged them tightly when the crier inside sounded, alerting me that "my baby" was in distress. I knew to do these things because of how my mother treated and nurtured me. Because of her example, I knew in my heart that I would be a good mother, when it came time for me to step into that miraculous role.
I’ve written of my mother before, and sung her praises. Yet, when it’s a good song, and the verses are many, it bears re-singing. I was my mother’s last child – her baby, and she’s never let me forget that fact: that I was her baby. [I think she called me that well into my high school years.] As such, I was blessed like my brother, her eldest, to have some alone time with her – bits of the day when no other children were around. Jeff had it because it was two years before my sister came along before he had to share Mom. I got it because I was two years younger than my sister, and when they went to school, I got to have my mother all to myself for a good portion of the day, five days a week. I don’t know how my mother felt about that, but I was in heaven!
My mother was a good sport. She didn’t plop me down in front of the tv and go about her chores. She was an active partner in my activities and made me one in hers. She watched my favorite morning show with me every Monday through Friday. I remember she’d sit with me and watch Captain Kangaroo, and when the crafting segment came on, we’d move to the floor with paper, glue, scissors, crayons and pipe cleaners in hand. If she was bored out of her mind, I hadn’t a clue. I just remember her making things with me, probably ad nauseam. Then, she’d always hang my masterpiece on the refrigerator. Some days, it was cutting construction paper and making rows of endless chains, other days it was coloring, which as those of you know from earlier posts wasn’t my strong suit as a child. I loved to color, but my sister was the Picasso of the family. Still, my mother proudly displayed all my artwork along with my brother and sister’s. No mater what art project Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans threw at us, we were game, and we had fun. At least I remember it as fun. I giggled up a storm when Mr. Moose came on, and Mom would hold my hand as I danced around the den along with Dancing Bear. There was a sketch that had an animated Grandfather clock with a "man in the moon" type face on it, and it was then that I became fascinated with Grandfather clocks and told my mother that I was going to have one some day, and I do. I think about those days sometimes when I pass by it in my living room. I pause and look at it, and I remember another place and time, when such a grand statement of time and such a magnificent presence adorning MY home was just a dream.
After the show went off, she’d let me help her clean our house. It’s amazing how much fun that chore can be when you’re a child. Mom would hand me the silverware to stick into the slots of the basket in the dishwasher. She’d also let me sit on my father’s desk beside the ironing board and spray the starch on his shirts, after she’d showed me how to do it – pressing lightly and quickly moving the can all over, making certain not to spray too much. Or, she’d spray the furniture polish and let me follow along with the dust cloth, reminding me to rub the lemon Pledge in until there was nothing left but a shine. Doesn’t sound like much, but to a five year old, it was great fun and excitement.
My favorite chore, however, was when we’d go to the grocery store. It was my favorite chore for two reasons: after Mom had lifted me into the seat at the top of the cart and secured me there, I was given the important task of holding her purse, while we shopped. However, before we began shopping, she wheeled the cart to the cookie aisle and got me a small box of animal crackers – a little purse in and of itself to a kid, because it had a string attached to it like a handle of a purse that kids could hang onto their wrists. She opened the box for me and pulled a cracker out to get me started with my snack, before we went about our way. [As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that this was her clever tactic to keep me quiet and occupied while we shopped.] The other important job I got to do, in addition to holding her purse was hold the carton of eggs. I knew how to delicately handle eggs because my granddaddy had taught me how to collect them from the henhouse in the summer when we’d visit the farm. Grocery shopping was my favorite time, because it was an adventure of sorts, and I got to help my mother look for the cans and bags of food that would feed our family for the week. It also taught me that doing mundane chores with someone helped the time go by quickly and wasn’t as tedious as doing it by yourself. [My husband and I now grocery shop together. Lesson learned...]
Time spent with my mother wasn’t just about watching tv shows and doing chores though. The most important thing about my mother was that she was always there when I needed her. From holding me during the awful moments when I was sick or had injured myself during play, to being the home-room mother for my first grade class, which meant that she went on all our field trips, to taking me to college when I left home for the first time, to helping me in my catering business, to planning my wedding with me and a whole host of things I couldn’t have done or done right without the assistance of my mother. These are the defining moments that stay with a child, if your mother was an active presence in your life. Mine was.
She has been my greatest teacher, which isn’t taking anything away from my father. However, being a woman, my mother has gone through the things that a little girl growing into an awkward teen then turning into a young woman went through, and was able to advise me and guide me in certain ways that my father could not simply because he carried a Y gene, and I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, my father had plenty of advice on the subject, but my mother has always been identifiable to me, as I’ve changed and grown. When I talked to her about "girl issues", I knew she knew and understood what I was saying or questioning. She showed me how to be a lady AND a woman. Trust me when I tell you that there is a difference. It’s important to be both, and just as important to know when to be one versus the other.
My mother helped me set-up my first home, and it was my mother I wanted when I experienced the greatest loss of my life. It was her arms and hug I needed to reassure me that I wasn’t the ginormous failure I was feeling that I was, because my body had failed me–betrayed me when it miscarried my first child. The comfort from one’s mother is different than the comfort from one’s husband. As a woman, my body was made to carry a baby. It is one thing that distinguishes us from men. I had dreamed of being a mother my entire life, and when the moment came for me, I wasn’t able to make it to the finish line. It was devastating, and though I knew walking into her embrace that this was something that unlike my childhood "owies" she wasn’t going to be able to kiss and make all better, I still needed her arms around me. I still needed to nestle my head into that space between her shoulder and neck and cry until I was able to gather my bearings so that I could face the awful loss that had befallen me and Tom.
It was the first time that I truly saw in her eyes and felt in my heart how much she wanted to take the loss from me and carry it solely as her own. It pained her that she couldn’t. I sensed the helplessness in her that this was something that she really couldn’t fix for me. But, her strength along with my husband’s helped me bear up under it. When it happened a second time, I heard the genuine sorrow in her tone when she asked me what she could do–what I needed. There was nothing she could do; I just needed to know she was there so that I could cry or rage or mourn whenever the need in me arose to do those things. And, she was.
We’re both a little older now, and I’m lamenting with her about gray hairs that are creeping into my locks.
"It’s shocking, Mom!" I told her the first time I saw a collection of them spreading through the light brown and golden strands and roots where blonde highlights should have been. "My hairdresser asked me this morning what I wanted to do about all the gray that was coming in, and I replied with a Scooby Do, ‘huh?’!"
Oh, she laughed. It was such a humorous moment for her coming from the daughter who said to her when her hair first began to turn varying shades of color that were not her original own, "What’s the big deal, Mom? It’s just a little gray hair!"
She didn’t remind me that payback is hell. She simply asked if it truly bothered me, because nothing about aging had ever distressed me before. I was always the one who truly didn’t have a problem getting older, because from where I sat, it beat the alternative. I didn’t have the "pause" moments that most women have when they turn 30 or 40, and I think it humored her that a few little gray hairs had now put me into a tizzy-tailspin.
So, when she asked me that question, I paused to consider it, and realized that, yeah. It really kinda bothered me a little bit.
"Then color it, Honey!" she told me. "Until you decide that it doesn’t bother you anymore!" Have I mentioned she always knows what to say and when to say it?
In the last few years, my mother has decided to embrace her seniority and allow the gray to come to her in full throttle-mode. She stopped coloring her hair about a year ago. I remember when she told me she wasn’t going to color it anymore, because she was coming up for a visit and wanted to "prepare" me for her new look, I gave her that same Scooby Do ‘huh?’. It seemed inconceivable to me that my mother, who had always been given the divine gift of looking 10 years older when she was a teen and 20 years younger the entire rest of the time of her life, would no longer be fuss-budgeting over her hair color.
"What?" I asked in disbelief. "Who are you and what have you done with my mother?"
She laughed and told me she'd finally reached the age when it was more trouble than it was worth, and she didn't care to maintain the upkeep of it anymore. I remember her explanation that she was at an age in her life when she didn't feel the need to impress or bedazzle anyone anymore. [My mother STILL impresses and dazzles anyone she meets, just so you know...]
BUT, I know my mother as well as she knows me. It’s that double X chromosome that we share that enables us to have a handle on the other in funny little ways like that.
She laughed when I called her out with an "I’m onto you!"
"What!" she demurely laughed. "are you onto?"
"You’re doing that so that when people find out that you’re 71 [she stopped caring about people knowing her age too], their mouths will drop open and say in shocked disbelief, ‘71?! My God, you look FABULOUS!’"
"Martha Jhill!" she playfully chastised, laughing all the while. "You are terrible!"
"But, I’m right, Mother-Dear!" I laughed in return.
She didn’t deny it one way or the other, another lesson she’s taught me: when someone asks you something you’d rather not answer or something you don’t particularly take issue with, turn the question around to them and ask them why they want to know? Or, simply don’t acknowledge an observation one way or the other. It says something without having to state it. Good advice.
I remember back when I was in my 20's, I’d read an article in something that stated that the older we get, the more our mothers become our friends. I have found that to be true.
I talk to her every day on the phone, and if I can’t get a hold of her, I send out the Jacksonville police to make certain she’s not stuck on the side of the road somewhere with a flat tire or someplace she’s not suppose to be ;-) [That’s a little joke between us...the child DOES become the parent in terms of worry. It’s one of those "turnabout" things that come into play as we enter the stages of our lives that we’ve now stepped into.] What can I say? She lives in Florida, and I live in Virginia. If I can’t get a hold of her within two days, I’m going to send the National Guard out to look for and find her. It’s no less than she’d do for me, if the shoe was on the other foot. Her health and well-being matters to me, just as knowing that she’s safe and alright matters too. I make no apologies for it. I’m a lioness when it comes to the protection of my mother. Then again, I get that trait from her, you see...
I like my mother – the woman she is-who she became. I hope my evolution is as interesting as hers. She’s a far cry from the little country girl from Virginia she started out being. I’ve never considered myself to look like her. My sister was always the spitting image of my mother who was the spitting image of hers. But, I see more of her when I catch my image in the mirror now - it’s in the eyes and the smile. I am my mother’s daughter. I come from a hearty stock of good women, so it’s no surprise that I would think of my mother in that light. She’s a good mother too. As the song says: "I’ve got a good mother, and her voice is what keeps me here - feet on ground, heart in hand, facing forward to be myself...."
Myself is pretty good. I owe that fact to my mother for the wonderful example she set for me by showing and teaching me how to be a lady and a woman. I owe her heartfelt thanks for being a good mother. However, there aren’t enough "thank yous" in existence to let her know how much I thank God that he chose her to be my mother! My heart is grateful for the blessing of her – especially on this day.
I remember being a child and beginning each prayer with "God is good! God is great!" Yes. That’s an accurate statement. And, so is my mother ~ good and great. Let me thank her for everything...
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