This is my teenage mother at her high school graduation. She was still seventeen when I was born later that year, just a girl. . She’s now in her late seventies. I hope she doesn’t mind my saying so. She was with us the last four days, and I tried to get her to watch Juno, the postmodern teen pregnancy movie, to see if she drank a lot of gator-aid and threw up in the flower pots, but she wasn’t so interested.
I love when she comes. It gives her a change and I get to make sure she sleeps through the night without the adrenaline crush of going from dead sleep to heart-stopping hurry (she has to get up several times a night with Dad).
The past seven years her work has been taking care of him since a stroke paralyzed his left side and took away speech. But he can feed himself and think, but he’s mostly trapped inside himself. Mom has help, I have two brothers and a sister who live near. That’s so good. But her margin is narrowing and the time between needing a break grows shorter.
When she got on the plane, heading home yesterday afternoon, she was planning to stop at the supermarket, drive the remaining thirty-six miles to her house, make supper, and about 8:30 when they’re done working, two young women will show up for a weekly Bible study with her even though she lives seventeen miles from town. After, they eat a late supper together. They’re both single, one divorced, the other engaged. I said, why don’t you cancel this week? Give yourself a break, once. But she said no, the previous week she’d been sick and they really miss it. She also mentioned they usually stay until midnight or later. (If someone stays that late with me – I yawn repeatedly and start shutting out the lights.)
Although it’s obvious I have some ways to go, she taught me the Bible, too. And how to make pie crust, and take chances. Neither of us like sticky, sweet, sentimental cards unless it’s from someone under the age of ten or your own kid. So, Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you.
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