(my mom, sometime in the early 1950’s)
You may remember a few weeks back our infant granddaughter became suddenly critically ill.
We had spent days and time in two different ERs until a diagnosis was finally concluded…
salmonella.
With the doctors suspecting either the premade liquid formula or a new sample we’d received from the pediatrician’s office.
Naturally and understandably, it was a very scary time for all of us.
For one so young, so new to our lives and so small…to be so sick…
Finally, on the evening we’d gotten home from the hospital—
after the antibiotics had been administered and with the fever finally subsiding—
I found myself needing to spend the night with them at their house.
Now remember…this house, that is now their house, was also, at one point in time, my house—
meaning it was the house I had grown up in.
There is still a copious amnout of “stuff” in the basement that needs to be sorted, tossed,
sold or simply packed up and put away.
The basement is the collective receptible of several generations of both previous, current
and even future lives.
That night, once the baby was settled and we had all managed to eat a little something,
I opted to wander down to the basement in order to see if I could find an extra phone charger.
While rummaging through a few boxes I came across the above picture of my mom;
a picture I had never seen before.
Here it was, the end of a horrific and frightening three-day ordeal for this new
and precious granddaughter of mine…
I was exhausted, and if the truth be told, an emotional wreck.
Yet here I was being met by an image of mom smiling up at me from a box.
It was pre-me image that was staring up at me from that odd juxtaposition of both space of time.
Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, I felt familiar hot tears forming in my eyes.
Tears that had been sitting for a few days full of worry only to now be sitting with
grateful relief.
Yet tears also sitting because of this image of this woman who was now so very far
removed from my life.
And yet here she was.
Coming to me at a time when I certainly found myself needing her.
My friend and fellow Bulldog supporter Lilka, over on B is for Blessed,
wrote a beautiful mother’s day tribute to her own mom, a woman that she too had
lost just as I had lost my own mom.
Reading her words I could readily relate as I felt those familiar warm tears forming
once again.
I too knew that bittersweet feeling such a day of remembrance brings.
Memories sweet yet married with a real sense of sorrow for what is now missing.
That being the tangible.
And so it is on this Mother’s day that I now think of who is missing, who was and who
I miss while at the same time I celebrate who is here and who has come bringing a
renewed sense of wonder and joy.
They both have the same color of eyes.
Yet with my having been adopted, this grandbaby of mine does not have
my mom’s eyes but actually those iridescent eyes of her own mother’s.
Yet I somehow know that these two women, one now long gone and one having
recently arrived, each connected by a generational love of both space and time,
have met before.
They’ve passed each other in a different place other than my own.
They’ve held each other briefly as one remained and one was sent for arrival.
It is a happy Mother’s day that way…
So happy 1st Mother’s Day to Abby and Autumn…may today be a treasured day full of
a life of precious memories to come…
Oh…and we shouldn’t forget mother’s younger sister, Aunt Maaaathhhaaaa,
who now finally finds herself enjoying being with that big sister she’s missed now
for oh so many years…
(a young Martha with Mimi’s dog Joy circa 1957)
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