5.9.2010

Mother’s Day.

Where did this come from? A day set aside to honor our mothers and motherhood. A quick search on the www gave me a new take on this date. I was surprised to find that it is a world wide celebration in one form or another. So much for my conspiracy theory involving a card manufacturer set on exacting guilt from a society to reap large amounts of cash.

This day for me has been an accumulation of memories. Some I hold dear – the ones of my small son delivering me a handmade card along with a ‘gift’ his dad felt would be just what I had always wanted. Other memories are the bittersweet ones of my mom and the vacancy left by her death. That loss when I was 35 left me struggling with this day for a very long time. It seemed to only serve as a reminder that she was gone and I leaned
toward the melancholy memories rather than rejoicing in the time I had been given perhaps because she died a week before mother’s day.

It has been a long time coming that I have finally reckoned with this day. I can walk outside my house to smell the May blooming star jasmine – her favorite – without being taken down to tears. I can watch her transplanted amaryllis bloom, whispering the stories of her life and that of her mom’s (very huge bulbs that have survived moving from her childhood home to reside with her for 30 years and then to my yard).


Momma ~

Who was this one person; her reflection dwells within my soul. Very few people knew her, yet those few walked away with a deeper sense of themselves. A thinker; one who contemplated all mysteries. A God-fearing woman who was held hostage by her own frailty. I have often wondered if she wasn’t in daily reconciliation with a higher power.

As a young child she suffered a high, lasting fever. The final prescription from the local town doctor – strychnine. ‘It will either kill her or cure her’. This was later believed to be the source for her muscular atrophy. You might say that she began her life in what seemed an accelerated act of dying sooner rather than later.

She raised her children with a vigorous desire as her time may be stolen before she was done. Our lives were tended like careful gardens, seeded with many profound conversations that comfort me still. I found her with three year old Timothy sitting quietly on her lap; murmurings too low for me to hear – this not long before she left us. When I ask what they were up to, it didn’t surprise me when she said that she was just telling him things that later he would need to know.

So, today I think on Momma. I have found a serenity in my heart that knows I was more blessed for her short years because she was always busy living harder than she might done otherwise.

Dorothy Arnold Horton, nee Pepper – March 1, 1933 – May 3, 1993

A tenacious spirit to defy the odds – outliving all predictions
A studious reader of anything that questioned ‘why’
A philosopher in her own right
A stubborn soul that spoke of her foundation
A joyful being ~ yet likened to a rainbow after a storm, fleeting but beautiful
A storyteller of our Creek heritage
A magnet that drew people back to her after their first meeting
A lover of coffee
A devoted daughter, sister; wife, grandmother ~ but always just my mom.

Early this morning I had coffee with my mom as the sweet jasmine filled the air. A pair of whip-o-wills call to each other nearby before retiring for the day just as the chorus of day birds woke to sing their jubilant songs.
We talked of all the tears and fears that mothers endure, then pride that finally comes when you see your child bring to fruition all your desires.
We reminisced about the bold personalities of her four sisters, the loving sternness of her dad that was an equal balance to her mother’s gentleness.
But mostly she and I came to terms today about those last pain-filled hours as I sat holding her hand, watching as she slowly drifted from me. After all speech had left her – with distraught eyes that held me captive as if she had something that desperately needed to be said. Those eyes that have haunted my dreams were not a sorrowful cry to not leave this world, but a beckoning for me to let go of what she knew I’d tote around like unnecessary baggage and to just get on with being busy at living.

I caught a reflection of myself and thought – I am my mother’s daughter.

~..~