Take time with your mother (05/12/08)

Yesterday was Mother's Day. It was also how many flowers can I plant for my mom day and can we drag her out of the house to go eat day. It was also where is a vase or a glass to put these lilacs in day and what do you mean you don't like lilacs day. This was preceded by several baking and shopping days.

I have never been one of those people who can stop by their mother's house for a few minutes and be on their way. For one thing I have never lived close enough for that.

Instead it is a major production to go to my mother's. I have to shop and bake and gather everything I want to show her or give to her. Hostess cupcakes or some other non-nutritious food is required to sustain me for the hour or so it takes to get there.

I am writing this before the actual holiday and I plan to take some cookies, meatloaf, a pie or cake and whatever else sounds good to eat. Plus there will be a flat or two of flowers in the backseat. Since I am taking flowers I will also have to take planting tools and maybe a bag of good dirt.

It amazes me that I actually buy dirt. When I was a kid we always had good dirt, courtesy of the cows and horses. However, the house she lives in now does not have cows or horses and the soil there is more like concrete than anything organic.

She is worth every bit of the time and effort it takes for a visit.

She is my mother. I knew her when she was young, strong and carefree. I knew her when married my stepfather and they were happy. I knew her when she was pregnant with my brothers and after they were born I gladly handed them back to her when they needed changed.

I knew her when she was struggling to take care of her bed-ridden mother while dealing with teenaged sons and a husband who was losing his sanity.

I have watched her grow older, and then grow old. I hear her obsession with the ills of the world and the fear that clouds her days. She watches the news religiously. Seldom does she know where the event took place; just that somebody got shot, a house burnt down or someone was robbed. She knows it could just as easily happen to her as to whoever is on the news. She is afraid.

She has the aches and pains of old age and doesn't understand why the doctors can't make her quit hurting. She is convinced that something is wrong and "they" just aren't telling her.

She lives for her soap operas and visits from her children. She doesn't believe in diet or exercise. She doesn't go to church because her husband went to church faithfully and nobody from the church visited or helped him when he got sick. She can't stand that kind of hypocrisy.

In spite of all that, each of her children knows without a doubt that they are loved and valued. I get as tired of hearing about how perfect her precious boys are as they get tired of hearing how perfect I am.

So many children do not get that unconditional love from their mothers, or anyone else. Those children often grow up to fill our prisons.

Other children lose their mothers too early. Sometimes they overcompensate by trying too hard to be perfect, not knowing that their mothers look down from heaven to watch over them and will always love them, perfect or not.

We honor our mothers on Mother's Day and try to give them something they will like. One day we will look in the mirror and see our mother's face. We will open our mouths and hear our mother's voice. Then we will do the one thing that our mothers did that we swore we would never do - we will wet our fingers and wipe a smudge off our child's face and thus pass on the love we were given.

It is then that we know for certain that our mothers never die, that they live on in our hearts forever.[[In-content Ad]]