I'm not sure how it happened that I grew taller than the woman who once seemed to tower over me like some friendly goddess.
I cannot pinpoint a single moment in which she passed her torch to me and my siblings as the vital women and men in our "prime of life" and she began to lead us into a graceful golden age by example.
The whole aging process is as weird for me as it is for her. I don't know quite how or when it happened.
Yesterday as we left her house - the home where she raised me from infancy to adulthood - to go for our walk in the gorgeous June sunshine, Mom remarked, "I don't know how I ended up this vintage, I still feel so young."
"I guess the answer is, you kept putting one foot in front of the other," I laughed.
"That's right," she giggled.
Yet walking forward, I felt a lump growing in my throat. I had to turn my head so that she wouldn't see me getting emotional.
There are no words adequate to express just how much I love my mother, yet I believe that anyone who has a parent that they adore will understand exactly what I mean. I know that not everyone is lucky enough to have a strong bond with one or both of their parents, and in all honesty, I didn't have much of a bond with my Dad (at least not one that I recognized at the time) until he was already well into his years of decline.
Mom though has been an integral part of everything that makes me who I am. Every childhood birthday and slumber party, every high school date, every college exam, every job interview, every new apartment, everything.
She was physically present in the room with me - just she and my husband - holding my hand and praying through my agonizing screams, as I pushed my children out into the world in a mess of blood and other fluid. I don't even want to know the parts of me that they have each seen; just the IDEA of them watching that intense process sort of blows my mind. Yet there they were, weeping with me and beaming and holding those precious little newborn boys. (The girl came by c-section; I was alone; my father had died 22 hours prior. More on that later this week...)
I cannot imagine a world without my mother, one in which I am an orphan and there is no longer a single person on the planet who loves me unconditionally. I am so deeply thankful for my siblings, husband and children - for my wealth of amazing friends; I live such a blessed life but nothing - NOTHING - can replace my mother.
Yesterday as we walked together I couldn't help but notice the changes that time has wrought in that beloved lady. Just as I continue to think of myself as only slightly more than seventeen years old I have crystallized my mother in my own memory somewhere around the age of 47, when I was ten.
When I think of her I picture jet black hair flowing down her back, those high defined cheekbones, a sweetheart mouth and incredibly warm embrace - coupled with ice cold hands. I remember how calming her cold hands were to me as a small child, as she would place her palm upon my forehead to check for a fever or to smooth my tousled head. (I'd never heard of poor circulation back then...)
It has been really hard for me to accept that she won't be here forever. I don't honestly know how I'll cope.
Yesterday after we walked I sat in the front from of her beautiful house where I grew up, and I realized that the day will come when I can no longer enter through its front door as I please - a day will come when neither the door nor the house belong to our family. That is the strangest thing I can imagine; given that my own parents moved into the house just months before my birth. Going on 36 years now - the entirety of my existence - it has been the veritable seat of our family tribe.
What will it be like someday when I drive down along those cliffs and pass my "old" street, without being able to stop in? Will I knock on that thick wooden door years from now to the answer of strangers, asking if I can please show my children or grandchildren the interior of the home where I grew up?
It's hard to wrap my head around.
I said something in that vein to my mother yesterday, something like - "It will be weird when we don't have this house anymore," with all of the subtle implications that accompany such a statement.
My mother nodded and then said philosophically, "Well, it's just a house."
"I know what you mean - it's the people in the house that make it special," I agreed.
The uncomfortable, unacknowledged bit in my sentence stuck jaggedly in my throat. When my mother is no longer in the house, it will no longer be our home. My mother is what makes the house special, now that my father is gone. When she passes on, it will become merely a house.
I hugged her very hard when I left for the day. "See you soon!" I promised, and my words were more like a command or a demand or an entreaty to the Universe. (Please let me see my mother again soon!)
Late last night, I awakened in pitch black to the crying of a child. Our three children share the same bedroom so I peeked my head into their doorway to see who was restless or unhappy. As it turned out, our nearly two year old daughter was fussing - standing next to the bed of her nearly four year old brother. Actually she was crying her head off and trying to wake him up. Given that it was three in the morning, I decided to whisk her out of there before she roused the entire house.
Swiftly I entered their room, picked up my little girl, and brought her into our third bedroom so that both my husband and our sons could try to sleep. Holding her in the third room, I sang to her until I felt her tense little body shudder and then relax into mine - finally accepting sleep now that she was enfolded in the comforting scent of her mother.
"It's okay, baby girl," I soothed her in the darkness. "Did you have a bad dream? You're okay." Her warm little body tucked into its footsie pajamas snuggled against me and I inhaled the scent of her baby shampoo. We began to fall back to sleep.
Just then I realized something; remembered something that my mother told me years ago. "By the time I leave this Earth," she'd said, "You will be married with a family of your own. You may even have a daughter."
Yesterday in the dark night holding my tiny daughter and feeling powerfully connected to her, it struck me for the first time that perhaps someday she and I *will* share the same kind of profound love and friendship that I share with my own mother. Perhaps she and her brothers are the gifts that Life has generously shared to assuage my grief over the loss (past and future) of my own parents.
As if reading my mind at that moment, my daughter murmured "Mama"... just before she began to snore gently.
Perhaps many years from now my daughter and I will talk and walk along the seaside cliffs, and she will reach for my hand just as I have reached for the hand of my mother throughout all of these precious years. It is a comforting thought.
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