Mother's Days

I'm not 100% positive I remember my mother. I think I might have a real memory, but I'm not sure.

In my mind I'm on a bus, standing next to the driver, and looking down the stairwell. I see my mother: she's outside the bus and to the right of the open doors. There's a stroller tipped up onto the steps. She's looking up at me.

That's all.

I think it's a memory, because how could anyone have told me that story? In such a way that I can SEE it? I think it's just mine.

It's hazy, though. When I try to concentrate on the image it gets soft in my mind. Like a 50-year old copy of a photo, grown soft from handling, details wearing away along the edges, colors blending to gray.

I would have been three, maybe not quite that. I think it must be my memory. So I try to open my mind's eye wide and not look too hard at it. Keep it at the peripheral of my vision like those crazy Magic Eye pictures. As long as I can I want it to stay, so it's OK if it isn't quite all there.

I'm grateful for what I have.

I am her first born and her only daughter. She died nine days before her 24th birthday. I was three.

I've heard from people over the years at family events. They knew my mother and want me to know how very special she was. How kind. Patient. Pretty. Beautiful blue eyes. Wide smile. How she loved my father.

I say, "Thank you." I don't know what else to say, but sometimes I say, "I'm sorry." They lost someone they knew and loved.

She sounds like someone I'd want to be around.

Her death fractured her family. Yes, they mended, but remained brittle at the broken places. She was gone and at the same time a very real presence in the life of my grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

"Remember when Patty..." was the start of a lot of stories. I knew them so well I wasn't sure if they were my memories, or theirs.

She sang "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to me. She did take the bus regularly. She tried to cook, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I have the menu she planned for her first wedding anniversary: stuffed shells were part of the dinner.

I was listed as one of the 7 guests.

I have her devotional book. She started reading it in January 1955, and tracked her progress as she read and re-read it. From the time she was 14 until two months before she died, reading and rereading.

Growing up, the reality of being her daughter felt too big, too heavy. I was not like her. I was not her.

She was gone, but she was all around me. Someone that I could never see but desperately hoped I could glimpse. That I could feel.

My aunt showed me a hairbrush in a plastic bag. It belonged to my mother and stayed on my aunt's dresser. She didn't find that at all odd.

My grandmother cleaned my mother's winter coat every year and hung it in the coat closet again with those of the rest of the family. When we had dinner in the kitchen, I was always aware of that coat, just feet away. Waiting on a hanger, but never to be worn again.

It was too much.

They remembered her voice. The clothes she wore and when she wore them. Her favorite foods. The way she laughed. How she would hold me.

She and I both married at 19. I didn't know it when I did it, but I bought my wedding dress at the same shop where she bought hers. My grandmother told me about the coincidence on my wedding day. I could scarcely breathe at the thought.

She was a mother at 20, my daughter was born when I was 22. When I was 24 my second daughter was born and for the rest of my life I would be older than my mother ever was.

It was too heavy.

I cannot be as patient as Pat. I am not as kind. My spiritual life is not as disciplined. I am not a daily part of the lives of my greater family.

I feel the expectation of years: I am Patty's daughter. What have I done to make her proud? How have I made good use of the promise of her life?

I have a grandson with the same merry smile that she had. He will not know his great-grandmother. I have no personal stories to tell him of her. Just a filmy memory of a bus, open doors, a stroller.

When he was a year old, though, I watched him riding in his little electric car, thrilled that he could make it go all by himself. I called to him and he ran laughing to me, arms opened wide.

I reached for him ~ my mother's hands~

I picked him up and lifted him high. I kissed his cheeks ~my mother's kisses~ I told him I love him. I am proud of him. I love him.

I am Patty's daughter. I'm her oldest child. On this Mothers Day, this day of mothers, I won't see my daughters. I won't see my mother, or my step-mother, or my mother-in-law, or my grandmother. I won't see my grandsons.

I’m learning now to handle the memory of my mother carefully and appreciate it as either true or something almost-true but nonetheless precious. I will always have that little child within me, but now is the time for me to learn what my place is as a grandmother.

And it's not heavy at all.

My part is to whisper in their ears so that they will remember me and for their own sake, to shout it from the roof top if I get the opportunity. For these boys, and for that little girl waiting for her mama:

• I'm proud of you.
• You are special.
• You can be kind.
• You can be what you want to be.
• I love you.

(The picture above of my parents is from my aunt's wedding. Everyone is looking at the camera. Except my mother. My mother is looking at my father. It's also the earliest picture of me: she's about 7 months pregnant.)

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For my other writing, including a story about my father, click here.