Childhoods

Straight up, I miss my mommy and am not sure I will ever stop missing her. She passed into glory on the morning of May 25th of this past year. Despite her failing health, she remained her sweet self to the very end. Less than two days before she passed, we talked by phone. Still her sweet and encouraging self, yet she admitted she was tired. She hadn’t said this to me before and I knew it was time.

While she was blessed to pass at home on the farm as she had wanted, just a few weeks prior I had had the opportunity of spending the night with her in her hospital room. It was a very, very special time we shared together. It was as if we had gone back in time and were both young again.

Dad and Mother were twenty and eighteen respectively when they married. By the time Mother was twenty-six, she had four children to nourish with her love. Though I am the second of four children, being the oldest daughter I have come to realize just how fortunate I was to have had her to teach me by her example just how to be a wife and mother, and to care for a home. I have often said Mother would have been an amazing kindergarten teacher, a natural and gifted teacher for sure. I am so grateful to have been her private student.

And so, the night we spent together in her hospital room was a night I am so thankful to have experienced with her. While I was tired and found myself catnapping only to be awakened by her wanting to talk, I enjoyed every minute of our conversations. It was as if she was in her early thirties and I was a young girl. We talked of memories from each of our childhoods. We talked about our each dating and falling in love with our husbands.

It was fun to be able to discuss topics which would never have been possible all those years ago. And, to discuss the past not through my childhood eyes, but through my now adult eyes. And yes, how interesting to be able to see the past in a full circle view, now knowing what I could not have been able to understand as a child.

She seemed open to my asking about a particular fear she dealt with. We children knew of this fear, actually a very common fear many people have, the fear of water. While I knew of an occurrence during her early twenties which would have left anyone traumatized, I discovered during our midnight hour chatting of how her fear of water took hold of her as a small child.

What also came to light was just how much her own mother’s fear caused her fear to develop. Mother nearly drowned as an eight year old little girl. Her mother, my grandmother, helplessly witnessed this incidence. And while my grandmother seemed to worry not just about her own children, but we grandchildren as well, hearing my mother retelling the story, made it clear my grandmother’s fear of losing her baby girl had more of an impact on my mother than that of her own experience, the actual seconds of her own being under water.

While I am not sure whether Mother realized it or not, her retelling of her near drowning incidence was told based on the perspective, the fear, she saw on her own mother’s face that afternoon. I have wondered since, had my grandmother’s facial expression been different, would my mother have developed a fear of water? Being a mother myself, I totally understand my grandmother’s heartfelt emotions as she watched her little girl going under. Any mother who loves her own children certainly understands. This is what a mother is all about. This is what a mother is made of. This is my mother’s love.