Long overdue

Long overdue, my mom passed away in 1990 but here goes.

To my mom, who I always loved but didn’t always show it because it wasn’t always easy  -

I sometimes wish there was a telephone/chat line/ text messaging system (you would have loved computers) that could reach you now because there are so many questions left unanswered. I am curious about so much but it probably isn’t any more my business now than it was when you told me it wasn’t so I just hope that you’re still keeping an eye on me. I say to myself sometimes, when the going gets rough, I wonder how Mom would have handled that. Most of the time I know the answer and most of the time, it helps.  

There are a few things I should have said to you but didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t – I was blessed with your ability to procrastinate, your elephantine memory and your stubbornness. I wish I had also been blessed with your courage, your tenacity and you sense of purpose. Anyway, here are some of the things I should have told you.

First of all, sorry I was such a brat when I was a kid, especially in high school. That must have been tough. I often wondered why you weren’t more lenient, more understanding, more forgiving. Although it’s taken me 60+ years, I now have to admit your “tough row to hoe” was dead on. So, sorry for the insolence (I know you caught the eye-rolling, the under-the –breath comments, the slammed doors etc.) and thanks for the ultimate understanding that I was just being a kid and would come around eventually.

Secondly, thanks for being there. You were always there to listen, even though I wasn’t always there to talk. I thought that you didn’t understand – you have to admit, you did have a pretty critical eye – but the thing I missed back then was how overextended you were, how stretched to the limit physically, emotionally and financially you were for so many years as you held our strange little family together. I know now that I could never keep up with you, the way you took such good care of Dad during his long illness, gardened like a farmer to can, preserve, and store vegetables and berries from our large garden for food for the winter, made do with next to nothing because many times there was next to nothing, and then how you went out to work at an age when women today are considering retiring because necessity dictated it.

I am amazed, when I look back, at the magic you performed on a regular basis. You devised toys to keep me entertained. You cooked and baked and sewed and dreamed. You taught me the value of imagination. You invented gadgets to save time and energy – who would have guessed that a ringer washer could be turned into the perfect pea-shelling machine. It took a little innovation and a few squashed peas but in the end it worked like a charm. I remember, there were a lot of peas.

There was always baking and tea. We didn’t eat fancy, but we always ate. We were really poor but I didn’t know then how hard you worked to keep me from realizing it. I’m not angry anymore that you made me pay for my school bus fare out of my babysitting money.

Thanks for teaching me to read. Not how to read – I learned that at school – but to read for pleasure, for adventure, for solace, for friendship, for discovery, for information. You took me to the library – actually the Bookmobile on the corner – when I was four. The librarian said I couldn’t have a card unless I could print my name on it so I did. I’ve had a library card ever since.

And thanks for letting me use your sewing machine when I was so small I had to stand up to reach the treadle. You encouraged me to sew and I became good at it. Being able to sew turned out to be both extremely useful and somewhat obsessive.

And thirdly, I want you to know how proud I was/am of you, of how smart you were, how determined you were, how ethical you were and how insightful you were. You were a little older than most of the other kids’ moms when I was little (Dad was a lot older) and sometimes kids asked me if you were my grandma. No, I would say, that’s my mom. I said it somewhat indignantly and always proudly. I was proud of you as you achieved your career goal in your 50s, worked tirelessly as a volunteer throughout your life and I was in awe of you when, at the age I am now, you set out to see the world. I am still in awe.

There were so many things to be proud of, too many and too maudlin to write here. It sometimes took my friends to point that out to me. You always welcomed my friends and many of them loved you too.

And I admired your sense of balance between practicality and frivolity. You were a saver of string, elastic bands, paper clips and plastic bags. When, in your 60s, you received an inheritance that would allow you some luxury for the rest of your life, you went out and bought an electric frying pan and a small crystal chandelier. I liked that a lot.

And last of all, I want you to know that I love you and I miss you. We had our differences and it took years to work through “the stuff”.  When we finally realized that we were both going in the same direction but coming at it from different angles, neither one completely right, neither one completely wrong, we got along better. I miss our long conversations about life in general, our animated discussions about books or politics or how to fix the world, and our shared joys in your grandchildren. You worried about me – a lot –but when you realized I was all grown up and amazingly enough, doing okay, we became friends, really good friends. And who could ask for more than that?