Today is Mother’s Day and like all of you, I appreciate my mom. Her whole life, she’s been the quiet one that works hard in the background. Her main chore was providing food for her family and whoever else walked through her door. She always had a big garden and spent many hours out there hoeing and picking. We’d snap beans together in the kitchen while listening to old music on our little radio that sat on the windowsill. I helped her can countless jars of beans, squash, tomatoes, peaches, pears, and other garden goods. She canned the salmon she and her friends got up at the lake while I was at school (whew!). Dad always had a calf to butcher, so we had good meat in the freezer. We were organic before it was even a thing. She’s the only one I know who could quickly make a very tasty three-course dinner with only potatoes and whatever she had in the freezer.
My mom taught me to be kind to people. I remember when I was sitting on the top board of the corral watching my oldest brother mess around with whatever was inside it. I was hounding…might even call it bullying…him as I sat there. My mom took my youngest brother’s stick horse and gave me a good rap across my shins. It hurt! She told me, “You be nice to people.” I’ve tried to do that ever since. I never again wanted a painful whack across my legs.
Mom made almost all my clothes. She was an excellent seamstress and could alter patterns so fit. When my sister was growing up, they would find something cute in the store and Mom would go home and make something very similar for Sis. Growing up, I wanted storebought clothes because that’s what everyone else had. When we visited her mother/my grandmother, Grandmother would take me shopping for a storebought dress. I usually couldn’t decide between two of them, and she would end up buying them both for me. I appreciated what my grandmother did, but once past my high-school years, I appreciated the clothes Mom made for me a whole lot more.
Everyone tells me I’m lucky to still have my mom around. I wish I was. We used to enjoy spending time together, shopping, and talking about sewing, quilting. my kids, the places we’ve been, and people we know. Now, even though she has the same voice and the same body, her mind and short-term memory have been robbed from her by dementia. She’s a stranger that repeats herself constantly, doesn’t remember if she ate or not, often doesn’t know where she is, and can’t remember from one minute to the next what she’s said or done. I am blessed that she still knows me and my name. My heart would/will be crushed if the time comes when she doesn’t. I’m lucky she’s here because I can hug her and tell her I love her, but I grieve for the mom I used to have but is gone.
Honor your father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth. Ephesians 6:2-3