Mom

  

She was two years old when her daddy died, and her mom remarried a man who was abusive to her mother and to her.

Her mother (my grandma) ended up institutionalized and Mom lived with her stepfather who continued to be abusive.  When she was eighteen, Mom went to live with her Uncle Jim and Aunt Beulah.  They were good people. (I remember Pappy (uncle Jim) mostly for his large yard that was 100% garden and for the black licorice babies that he would give each of us kids every other Sunday when he and Mom would go to visit my grandma)  Mom was thrilled when she got to go and live with them, and they actually allowed her to date (at age eighteen)! 

My Pappy

Mom had a thing for guys in uniform; so when her and her friend spied two Navy guys leaving a local club one night the girls were on them like peanut butter on jelly. 

“I want the tall one,” Mom said.  

 Dad was the short one.  

And now you know the rest of the story....

My dad - the short one on the left

But Mom was an optimist, and she knew how to make things work.  

A nice sized rock for my Dad to stand on made him taller… 
Cereal for supper made our money go farther…  and peritoneal dialysis made her last days more bearable. 

Mom was not perfect.  

She would have been the first one to enlighten you if you said that she was.  

But I did not know one person who did not like her, 
flaws and all. 

Sitting at her dialysis table.  She did a solution exchange 4X a day and it took an hour for each one.  Since she was almost blind, she had to feel to do it.

On this Mother’s Day I remember the one and only person who made me feel as though I hung the moon.  The one I could call on the phone anytime and talk about anything.  The one who cared and loved me unconditionally. The one who felt I was important, special, loved no matter what!

May 8, 1994

It was a beautiful day.  Mothers Day.   It felt good to concentrate on my family and getting the kids and myself off to Sunday school and church.  

The week had been busy.  Multiple doctor visits for Mom meant I had to fight that big bulky wheel chair a number of times that week.  Getting it in and out of the car was almost impossible, it was so heavy and cumbersome.  Mom's mood didn't help.  I tried to smile and stay positive but the day she scolded me when she felt the wheelchair was not positioned just right had brought tears to my eyes and I had to swallow the lump that was in my throat without letting her know that her words hurt me.  She was not usually like that, but I understood.  She wasn't feeling well.  

The day was mine.  I would enjoy it with my kids and take Mom some dinner later.  We were ready to walk out the door when the phone rang.  

She needed me.

Would I ever have a life again?  Would I ever know what it was like to not have to drop what I was doing and drive over to Mom's to help her out of the chair?  Or to help with her dialysis when she could no longer see to do it?  Or do an emergency trip to the ER?  Or pick up a script?  Or, as in that day's unusual emergency, free her walker from being stuck between the bedroom and the bathroom?  

Frustrated, I did what I had to do.  

 God is glorious in how He orders our steps, changes our plans, humbles us, and brings us where we need to be in our lives.  

When I walked into Mom's apartment, the sun shone warm through the big window that overlooked the parking lot below.  I no longer felt violated by having to give up my own agenda yet again, but rather, a peace came over me like never before.  After freeing Mom's walker, I made her toast for breakfast.  She was having a good day, so then I made her a second helping of toast.  We talked and laughed and she thanked me over and over again.  I didn't want to leave and so I stayed into the afternoon.  Then I went and stood in a long line that seemed to go on forever so I could pick up dinner (chopped steak, mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans from the Silver Leaf Restaurant, that was her request for the day) and bring it back for her.  

Two months later, she was gone.  

Though at the time my patience was tried to the limit, I knew in my heart that one day I would be grateful for the opportunity to serve Mom for those years she was ill.  

She was a pretty good mom in spite of her troubled childhood.  So often today, adults blame their brokenness on the way they were raised.  It is my conclusion that we need to come to a point in our lives where we accept responsibility for our decisions and our actions.  Mom is proof that living a good, honest life of integrity and becoming better comes from learning and growing into a responsible adult, forgiving the hurt that was caused her by others, and moving on having learned from her own mistakes and of those who went before her.    

Our last Mother's Day together will always hold a special place in my heart.

I love and miss you Mom, and I’m so looking forward to our reunion one day.    

THE BIG APPLE

My first New York City experience.  A quick, one day visit.  

How could so many people be in one place?

Taxi's, Uber's, buses, bicycles, and people on foot....  here and there and everywhere.

Buildings reaching high into the sky....

Advertisements and short tempers everywhere.  Honking horns and cars cutting off other cars.

Times Square was a happening place and familiar faces were always popping up.

 The Toys R Us in Times Square was the biggest toy store I have ever witnessed.

No time for shopping though, we were on a mission.
For my 60th birthday, a Broadway Show.

We had great seats and the show was awesome!

 Here is what I learned:

Never attempt to drive through Manhattan on your own.  Only trained professional drivers should tackle such a thing.  Do like us, park it in Brooklyn and hire an Uber... or even a taxi or do the subway or a bus or ride a bike or walk or fly but DON'T ATTEMPT TO DRIVE IT....

And NEVER  EVER-EVER.... make your Garmin angry with you by disobeying her orders en route to your destination.  You never know where she may take you later...  on your way out of town...

I will admit.  I am a tad bit enormously claustrophobic and the thought of being in a tunnel under the Hudson River was not at all my idea of a good time.  As I focused on everything but the fact that I was under water,  my husband reminded me over and over again how very l-o-n-g the tunnel is and how it would take us forever to get to the other side.  

I enjoyed my trip to the Big Apple and we had a really good time.  But I was glad to get back home to my Gracie and it seems she was pretty happy to see us as well. 

Warning:  Please excuse the language...    and try and not feel too sorry for her.  She was well taken care of...  

Memory Lane

Yesterday I turned 60.  A trip down memory lane was in order.

My husband, along with my good friend and former neighbor, gifted me with:

A tour of the house I grew up in.

 The house has been empty for a while, used for storage.

The colorful pictures that are included in today's post do not hold a candle to the vibrance and space that I beheld back in those days of old...  as I looked upon my home then, through a child's eyes.

The big bathroom that my dad had built onto the house forty some years ago, (after my mom saw a snake in the outhouse and insisted), had somehow become smaller through time.

The walls seem to be closing in on the living room/boys bedroom that once was.  It is nowhere near the size that it was so many years ago.  As I remembered it, there was a couch, a chair, a black and white television set, a rollaway bed in the corner, and a pot belly stove .   It would have been magic had all those things actually fit in that one little room and yet left us with as much free space as I remember there being.  Magic indeed.

Every room is so much smaller than I remembered.

As a little girl I spent many a night finding my way into Mom and Dad's bedroom, and then sleeping in between them.  I would fear nothing then, not the dark of night...  nor sickness.... nor the unknown... for my comforters surrounded me.

Maybe they call them houses because they house so many memories long after those living in the structure are gone.

I had to ask.  "Was this really our kitchen?"

My mom and dad's 25th wedding anniversary took place in this modest kitchen and seeing it today, it does not seem possible.  Magic.

With six kids and two adults, things must have been really tight.  Much tighter than I ever realized.

The kitchen holds a lot of memories.  Mom would pack our lunches in brown paper bags and put them in the fridge for school the next day.  Sometimes she would make hoagies and cupcakes with butter creme icing.  Since the kitchen was warmer, thanks to the pot belly stove in the next room,  I'd sometimes come to the kitchen in the middle of the night when I was very cold and tuck myself inside a pillowcase and lie on two chairs put together.  By morning the coals would have burned away and it would be cold throughout the house.

There was once a porch on the outside of the front of the house, where on hot summer days mom would give us outside baths once a week.

 Summer vacation would last forever.  We played mubley peg in the dirt and climbed the apple tree in our neighbors back yard, eating little green apples till we were sick, sick, sick.

We played wiffle ball with the neighbor kids and I would dress my cats in doll clothes and pretend they were my babies.  My imagination took me on journey's far away.

I would earn a little money babysitting the neighbor kids on either side.  Then one day the neighbors in the red house moved away and not long after that the house was burned to the ground.  A cemetery was put in its place.  We now had a cemetery to the left and a cemetery above us.

My dad was an electrician and my mom worked in a sewing factory.

Dad was 53 when he died of a heart attack.

Mom was 69 when her kidneys failed and she passed away,   complications of diabetes.

Back then, the little four room house was alive with activity.

And the hill was busy...

And though the memories are recorded in black and white...

They are sharp and extremely clear.

This is the bedroom that I shared with my two sisters.

I remember that window being thick with ice on cold winter days, the wind howling and somehow finding its way through to the room where we slept.

And then...  as springtime emerged, the sound of birds singing lovely songs of hope.  Such happenings beyond that bedroom window!

 Nose to the glass, as a young girl I beheld a mound of coal for the furnace and the old wooden outhouse to the left and the chicken coop and big tree to the right.  I'd climb that tree as I got older, and sit there and read or sometimes just think about things.   I loved my simple, carefree life.

My dad would park his car right here.  As a teenager I would go outside and sit in that car, to be alone and listen to some music or read a book.

I can still see Mom wearing her cotton dress as she pulled wet clothes from the basket and hung them on the clothes line, a light warm breeze whipping the clothes in the summer sun.

 The same road where we met Dad each afternoon as he came home from work with his lunch leftovers (the bucket), was the same road used for hopscotch, bike riding, and waiting with our dimes for Mr. Softee.

 Though the pictures in this post are scattered, the old and new intertwined,  it's obvious that the faded and mostly black and white ones are those of old and the new scenes bright, colorful and vibrant.

Me with sister Angie

But today I find that the real color, vibrance, and space is in those memories from days so long ago.

Thank you Gary and Sandy, for this wonderful trip down Memory Lane!  You made my birthday very special!

Sandy was our neighbor then, and now owns our old house.    It was so kind of her to turn us loose and let us reminisce.