itsawonderfilledlife

My Mom is better than your mom … no, seriously, she is!

Many, many, many years ago, she gave me life. She, a young, single, still living at home woman, and me, a squawking, sleepless, poo-filled baby.

Once she returned to her desk job, not too long after giving birth, she gave me the blessing of being cared for by my grandmother, aka Nanny.

After a couple of years she met the man, who would become my Dad. And that decision too, was a blessing.

Then after a couple of years they produced a brother, and then repeated the cycle all over again … I don’t know that I viewed their births as blessings, at the time. But now I do.

As I grew, puberty began to raise it’s, sometimes, ugly little head, in our relationship together. I remember vividly the day my mom gave me the best advice ever … ‘Carole, over the next few years you and I are going to have times when we do not like each other very much. But I want you to know that I will always love you.’ Solid words, mom, and I believe they held me, held us, together through those tumultuous years.

One of my favorite funny memories of my mom is the ‘green tree story’ (at this point, my mother is not mentally composing an email to me to ‘set me straight’ for the millionth time about what she meant by what she said). The story goes that she and my dad had gone to the local Christmas Tree Lot to pick out their tree. My mom, whose mobility is not always the best, was sitting in the car. My dad says to her, ‘so, which tree do you want?’, to which she points (towards the dozens of trees … you know, green conifers) and says, ‘I’d like that green tree right there.’ You know, years later, they still have a green Christmas tree every year.

I spent less than half of my life living with my mom (that tells you how old I am … and how very young I was when I got married). But she has a profound impact on how I live.

She taught me to be honest, trustworthy, kind, sensitive and good to others, to be myself, and that it is a good thing to love God. I am, flaws and all, who I am because of my upbringing, because of my good mother. I believe my own children will only love me, in proportion to how I have modeled my love for my own mother. The jury is still out on how that is going to go.

But I know that I love her. I know that I respect her. I know that I could never know what it was to walk in her shoes, because I have been blessed to have grown up in a different time, with different parents, and different circumstances.

She was not, and is not, a perfect mother  … yet, she was, she is, perfect for me.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she did the best she could, with the resources that were available to her. And I know that, one thing is for sure, she has loved me from my earliest beginnings and will until we part on this earth.

When I do get to reunite with her, every couple of years, I love her hugs, I love the amazingly silky soft feel of her cheek against mine … I love her scent, that says, I belong to her, and she belongs to me. No other person on this earth smells as comforting to my senses as my mom.

“The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge