Happy Birthday, Mom!

You were my earliest memory of love, kindess, and quiet strength.

 I was one of five children, but never felt pushed aside.  I never had any inkling of how hard you worked to make our home a happy one.  To make sure our life was comfortable.  To never leave any doubt that we were loved.

I think now of all the time, all the days that were not your own.  I remember the greatest lesson you ever taught me was about how to treat others.  Kindness is your essential essence, one I believe you came into the world with.  I haven't always lived up to the standard, but I try.

It must have not been easy, especially when you had two of your five children who's mission it was to make each other miserable.  (Darren and I).  I remember one day when you had to run into a store and left Darren and I in the van and before you closed the door you peeked back in and said, "Please don't kill each other."

 You gave me great advice in those insecure years.  Be true to yourself.  Treat others how you'd want to be treated.  Don't wear a tight white T-shirt on a cold day.  Oh yes, I remember the day you were scandalized as you truly looked at me as I ran out of the post office and got back into the car to have you tell me we needed to drive home and change my shirt before we could go to Logan.  I always have been a bit naive.  But thanks for saving me from leering eyes!

 

From you I got my big smile, my love of reading, my empathy for others, my endurance in the face of sadness.  Do you know how much I loved waking up on summer break mornings, wrap myself in a robe and know that I could find you out in the flower beds?  I'd sit on the steps in the coolness of the morning and we'd talk about everything and nothing.  You'd be covered from head to toe and a wide brimmed hat on your head and you'd look up and say, "Always wear sunscreen.  The sun ages you."  I think I also got my vampire-like dislike for the sun from you as well!

 

But Mom, I really had no idea, no idea at all what kind of a mother you were until you held my own daughter in your arms.  It hit me, that the small taste of love I had felt for my daughter, was the same kind of love, but magnified ten-fold that you had always loved me with and will love me with forever.  In the years since I've given birth I think of you each and every day.  I wonder if I'm doing it right.  If my daughter will know the kind of love that I was raised on.  I once heard a quote by Oscar Wilde that went like this, "All Women become like their Mothers, that is their tragedy.  No Man does.  That's his."  Well if that is true then I will take that tragedy willingly.  I love you, Mom.  Happy Birthday!