"...This morning I saw a family at Starbuck's, mom and dad (my age, maybe a bit younger) and their 3 grown children, 2 girls in their 20's, and a son maybe 16. It was obvious that this was a "meet up and hand off" sitch, ie. one of the daughter's friends showed up outside and everyone trooped out to meet him. The mother and father came back inside and I overheard the mother muttering to the father "...Zach. I don't know his last name. Just Zach." And the father's look of dismay and disbelief. In my mind i'm thinking about the number of times I didn't know "the last name" when you guys went out. More importantly outside the store, the daughter leaving with "just Zach" and the brother are giving each other a goodbye hug and in that hug I see so much. It reminds me of the hug you guys shared this summer when we dropped Ali off, although the roles in today's event were reversed. Here the daughter was leaving, was excited about what the future held, but you could tell by the strength and duration of the hug how much she loved her brother and that she would miss him.
Today would have been Mom's 87th birthday. The love is passed on, generation to generation, becoming stronger each time the baton is passed.
L, mImZ ..."
Even though it was late in France, Lina called me after she read this and gave me a verbal hug. Some of the things that I forgot to mention in the letter I was able to tell her in person. And some things occurred to me after we talked.
Hopefully we all learn from our mothers, and do a better job with our own children. It's hard to "do better" unless we can acknowledge the quite human flaws that our parents have. It's only by comparison that we can benchmark our desire for change. My mother was an "only" child (she had a much older step-brother) and I think that my mother and grandmother were highly connected, Mom wanting to be a dutiful "good" daughter, but also pushing back against the smothering that she probably felt. My grandmother, Ruth Turk, was very opinionated, stubborn, and strong. A true feminist, she travelled around the South as a young woman selling Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias at a time when almost all young women were married. She and my mother did the "come here, go away" tango with each other all their lives. Ruth and my father were always at loggerheads, competing for Mom's attention.
Mothering and growing up as a person are like working with pure fine silver. You anneal (soften) the metal in the flame and then you "work harden" (make stronger, bring it up out of the soft state) the silver with a hammer, working it against the anvil or the metal block. What did Mom learn from her mother? That every child is a unique individual, to be encouraged and cherished, and given freedom to learn and grow. I think that being an "only" drove Mom to create a big family. She gave all of the siblings the gift of each other.
Mom thoroughly enjoyed the role of grandmother. Her 12 year battle with various cancers almost spanned the births of the 10 grandchildren (2 per child.) Lina was the first, born in 1985. Mom was first diagnosed in 1988 and lost her battle in 2000.
Luminous / . . .from within Lysa Lynn Schloesser ©2002 I imagine it was on an autumn day much like this one. When the crisp colors of the leaves etched a pattern against the clear sapphire blue Kansas sky that she loved so much. She told me later that she asked the question that few are brave enough to ask. On a day like today she sat in her doctor's office, like so many visits over the last eleven years, when she always attempted to be blissfully ignorant of the facts. I imagine that the most recent failure of a long hoped for cure sparked the question that must have hovered In the air, after so reluctantly leaving her lips: "Will I live to see another Spring?" For my mother, Spring was a time of renewal and birth, her favorite season. Living until Spring meant that she would have one more April birthday, one more chance to see her beloved garden in bloom and one more chance to greet her wintered-over goldfish who rose each time to the surface of her pond to greet her with waving fins. She fought so long to hold onto life that after a while none of imagined, really, that she wouldn't keep on fighting. I don't think her question was a signal of surrender; no - more an intimation of mortality. A recognition that the wonderful dance of life was drawing to a close. Today, I saw a line of trees laden with burgundy leaves and on the inner branches, hot yellow leaves glowed in sharp contrast. That is how I imagine my mother on that autumn day three years ago, her outer shell dark and rich and ready to fall, leaving her inner shining golden core alive in all of us she left behind.
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