My Mother. My Friend. My Inspiration.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

My mom is a neverending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. ~Graycie Harmon

The above quotes perfectly sum up my mother to me. She is everything I could ever want to be, but never will attain. She is the strength in my heart, when I thought I had given everything I had. She is the smile in the corners of my mouth when I thought I would never smile again. She is the friend I can turn to when all others have turned their backs. She is the arms that held me, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. 

The truth is, I could write forever and still not express the way in which I feel for her. When I was a child, she would stop whatever she was doing to tuck me in at night. She would sit on the side of my bed and read my bedtime stories from an old book with pictures of vintage looking children; little girls in their pink, frilly dresses-little boys in their blue coveralls. I remember laying there being so soothes by the sound of her voice. A teacher by nature, she had was a fantastic story teller. She had a way of making each character come to life; a play taking place in a little theatre on the foot of my bed. She sat with me as I said my prayers, asking the Lord to bless my family and not to forget my stuffed animals.

I could take anything to her that had broken and she could fix it. Many a decapitated barbie doll passed through her hands, which mended the plastic body and handed it back-good as new. I used to think that she could have fixed the world, if only the right people had asked. I still do.

She supported me incessantly in whatever my dream of the moment was. I wanted to be a dancer. She paid for me to take dance lessons for eleven years. I wanted to play the clarinet. She bought me a beautiful instrument that carried me into a new phase of my life.

When I discovered at age seven that I wanted to be a writer, she watched me as I wrote a ten page masterpiece titled "The Killer of Love" (based on the familiar Harlequin romance novels I saw her and my grandmother reading of course). Her and my father acted out their given parts with enthusiasm and vigor. She encouraged me to keep writing when she bought me my first type writer and supplied me with plenty of paper on which to craft my next work of art. As I grew and my writing grew, she gave me journal upon journal to document my thoughts. She told me of how she used to write when she was my age and gave me a notebook full of her teenage thoughts. It is something I treasure to this day.

She is always the first person to be proud of me and never fails to show that to other people, never in a boastful or negative way. It used to embarrass me when I was a teenager, as I am a fairly modest person. As time went on, I learned to enjoy it. She was proud of me. What shame was there in that?

The older I get, the more our relationship tends to change. There is a time in every child's life when the veil of perfection that has shrouded our parents is lifted- and we see them for the first time as humans who make mistakes. It is a bittersweet moment that comes with realizing that before your parents were your parents, they were just people-like you; moving through life trying to figure it out. They were people who loved you when it was difficult, even at times when, to someone else, you might have been unlovable. It makes me want to put my arms around her to shield her from anything or anyone who might hurt her. I suppose this is how she feels towards me, as if her love has been superimposed onto my heart.

My mother sacrificed for me, as did my father. She would often go without so that I might have that doll at Christmas or that dance costume for the recital. She never failed to tell me she loved me. She never failed to encourage me to dream the impossible dream. She always held me higher than herself so that I might reach the stars, herself perfectly content to remain in the ground. She let me have my own adventures, consuming me with the thought that I could be whatever I wanted to be; yet she remained in my shadow-always ready to come out and rid my world of the people who told me I could not.

My mother loves me with a love that has yet to be matched by any mortal heart. She loves me wholly, completely, unabashedly for who I am. She never tried to make me into someone I didn't want to be. I can only hope that the love I give her in return is enough. Though she deserves so much more than I could ever give.

If your reading this, Happy Birthday, Mom. I love you.

Remembrances of a Golden Time...That I Never Knew Was Golden

I never had a good relationship with my grandmother. We were never especially close. She was controlling, manipulative, and vain. It always upset me when my friends would talk about spending the weekend with their grandparents and they seemed to have literally had a good time. My grandmother made it clear from a young age that she was displeased with the person I was. I was a chubby kid. This was not acceptable. She told me this with all the monotonous repetition of a broken record that no one takes the initiative to fix. Most children remember their grandmother telling them how perfect they were in every way. They remember affectionate smiles and warm embraces. The most common words I remember being told was to "suck in" my tummy.

I recall childhood instances when we would be out to lunch, my mother and I talking and laughing when suddenly, the laughter would be interrupted by a parting of lips: "Do you see that woman there," she would say, "if you don't get your act together, you will be just like her. Do you want that? Do you want to be like her?"

The words ring out in my brain, echoing from the long term memory file folder with "Mema" etched in salty tears. That was what we grandchildren called her. It always struck me as peculiar that I was called her "grandchild". She didn't seem to think I was very grand. She spent the next seventeen years tearing away little shreds of my self-esteem. She would often ask me if I actually enjoyed living the kind of life I was living. She brought diet pills to Thanksgiving dinner. She would discuss me and my lack of interest in changing my ways to various people, some of whom had never met me.

During my fragile middle school years she pulled me aside and told me that if I didn't do something to change myself, no boy would ever love me and I would be lucky if they were my friend. Again...the echoing of her voice haunts me. She never failed to compare me to my thinner, prettier sisters. Why couldn't I just be normal?

Over the years, I built up a high level of resentment for her and her failed attempts to "fix" me. But more than that, I believed her. I soaked up every negative thing she said to me; the Bounty quicker-picker-upper of emotional burden. She taught me how to hate myself. She gave my self loathing a voice with which to do the damage she had somehow managed to leave undone. It worked. I always realized that I needed to get a handle on my body. I just felt it was so far out of my control. I was too young to understand that the neighbor who molested me at five years old, stole much more than my childhood innocence. His foul touch and her sharp tongue created the perfect environment to breed a downhill spiral.

When I was 17 years old she was no longer able to live alone or care for herself. After years of being bounced around a small handful of nursing homes, assisted living communities, and children's houses; none of which could handle her presence, my aunt and mother decided to move her back home and pay caregivers to stay with her around the clock. It was a job that used to belong to my mother before she required 24 hour care. She was the only one who stayed close to home. We spent our live at her beckoned call.

I was going to college and working a really crappy part time job as a cashier when they brought her home. I was so dissatisfied with my work that I approached them about being a caregiver for her. Soon after, I quit taking sweaty money from the bras of old black ladies, to spend the weekends caring for an old white one. That was what she was to me: an old white lady. I hated everything about it at first. I hated being away from my family, I hated being in that house which seemed to suck the very life from my body, I hated being trapped there with her watching her watch me and hating what she saw. We fought a lot. I said she couldn't do something according to the list of rules I was given. She said God would punish me for my sins. She said I was a disappointment. I said she had disappointed me my entire life. She said I was hopeless. I told her she wouldn't know hope if it danced at the foot of her bed. She fired me two years in at the end of September.

That was it. Or so I thought.

I swore I would never go back. My mother swore I would never go back. My father wouldn't speak her name, much less speak to her face.

January rolled around and the lady who stayed with her at day time during the week quit. I needed a job, so I went back. Excuse me-she allowed me to come back. We still didn't get along every day, but I knew that at five o'clock I could go home. I felt I could fake it for at least nine hours a day.

Before long, I felt like I didn't have to fake it. I genuinely started to care. We watched birds. I tried to convince her there was not a squirrel stuck in her bird feeder. We watched Gunsmoke and bonded over the handsomeness that was Matt Dillon, wondered in suspense as the Cartwright boys escaped one mishap after another, and laughed at Lisa & Oliver as they tended their Green Acres. But I think the memory that stands out the most is the first time she ever watched Steel Magnolias. We laughed and cried, then laughed some more. Every now and then, I would look over at her as she laughed. At that moment, she could have been five years old again. She laughed without inhibition. Her head was arched back and her eyes seemed to glisten; her small body a quiver with the sheer force of her happiness. The sun was coming in the giant picture window on the side of her and it was that perfect time of day where the rays casted a golden glow that shrouded the room, as if God himself was saying, "This is important. Remember this." I did. I think that was the happiest I had seen her in my entire life.

When we got the call one lazy Sunday afternoon in early November that she was not having a good weekend, I didn't think much of it. They said she wasn't eating. No big deal, some days she ate like an anorexic bird. We made sure to at least get Ensure in her system. When I got to work the next day, I knew something was terribly wrong.
I called the local Hospice center, where she had been a patient for over a year. When the nurse came out and checked her, my concerns were realized. At first, I was immediately panicked about where I was going to find another job. I know that sounds horrible, but it really was my first concern. I don't think I allowed myself to believe that she could actually die. I tried to keep it together. I tried to ignore her ragged breathing. I tried to look past her blank expression. I tried to erase her skeletal frame. As I sat alone with her, in that house, with my mother in the other room; I sang her favorite songs. I kissed her forehead. I held her hand and tried not to fall apart as I told her I forgave her. I felt like a lifetime had passed between us, and I didn't want to let go.

November 18, 2009

I wasn't there when she died. My mother, cousin, and I had gone to town to run some errands. My mother was relieved because she didn't think she could handle it. I never told her, but I really wanted to be there. She was surrounded by family and people who loved her all singing her favorite hymns; but I wasn't there. And I wanted to be. 

I never cried at the viewing. I never cried at the funeral. For the first weeks after that, I never cried. Thanksgiving happened, then Christmas and with the hustle and bustle...time just kept going. How does it do that? How does it have the nerve to keep going after someone has been ripped from our lives and we can barely keep going ourselves? I longed for people to stop looking at me with sympathetic smiles. I yearned for the day when we would no longer receive cards in the mail expressing sincere condolences. I was ready to move on. At least I thought I was.

I never thought it would be this hard. I couldn't have perceived missing her this much. I don't miss the drama. I don't miss the stress. I don't miss the fights. But I do miss fawning over Marshal Dillon. The Cartwright boys must feel abandoned and confused or at least they might if they were still alive. I hear a song that we used to sing together and I'm right there with her again. I miss walking out of her bedroom and saying, "I love you," only to hear her say, "I love you more." Those words echo in my mind too. They aren't always as loud as the others, but with time and love...I might not hear the others at all. These are memories I will always have of a time I can never get back. Of this, I am grateful and, can honestly say, I wouldn't change a thing.

A Sacred Bond

A ring,
A vail,
A long white dress,
Butterflies,
Laughter,
And happiness.

A father,
A daughter,
A walk down the aisle.
A bittersweet moment,
A warm, loving smile.

A promise,
A vow,
Words from the heart.
A brand new life
Fixing to start.

Jobs, goals, and bills
Oh my my my...
Before you know it
Five years have gone by.

A love, still new,
Expanding each day.
Learning and growing
Along the way.

A house,
A cat,
A new baby girl.
The best of each other,
She completed their world.
It's been eleven  years now
And life has sure changed,
But they wouldn't change a
Minute of it for anything.

A touch of the hand,
A kiss in the dark,
A deep understanding,
An infinite spark.

Looking back now,
It just doesn't seem
As if twenty-five years
Could have passed between
Our life now-
A dress,
A vail,
And a ring.
__________________________________________________________________

I wrote the above poem for my Aunt and Uncle in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary. Marriage is one of the most sacred of bonds and I hope God blesses me with the type of marriage they have. <3 Best wishes for another 25 years!