I AM My Mother!

      Walking down the stairs into the basement as a young child of 10,  I could remember rows of sheets, shirts, and pants hanging from the clotheslines.  I could remember that sinking feeling of mom telling me I could not go out and play until ALL the socks had been hung up to dry.  I could remember, with no dryer to speak of,  standing on the chair clothes pinning each sock for the five boys and my father up on the line…one by one.

Memories of my life with my mother, who lives still today some 89 years after her birth, are quite thick and indelible.  My first memories of her were those of a protective, very disciplined, and busy woman.  When I think of all the hard work my mother put into being a parent of five boys and a spouse to a very hardworking handsome and  loving man…I am left feeling somewhat grateful for having had the promise of her life in mine….literally!  For, I AM my mother!

As a parent, creeping into my mid-fifties, I am slowly coming to appreciate the patience and resilience of the two people I represent most in the life I lead today, my father and my mother.  BUT, primarily, as I finish folding another load of laundry, I have noticed I have become more like my mother.

It’s funny I should be saying this.  My mother, in her earlier years was a real clean-freak.  EVERYTHING was cleaned.  Sheets were ironed. Socks were ironed.  Underwear was ironed.  Everything HAD to look just right.  As a young man, the thought of always having my life so pressed and neat was maddening.  Oh….no….don’t get me wrong…from the very outset I was NOT at all close to what my mother had been in her late 30’s and early 40’s.  In fact, I was just the opposite……messy….very very messy!

Then came adulthood and parenthood.  I would quickly understand the merits of my mother’s efforts to keep a house clean.  While I have never ever attained my mother’s disciplined level of what clean should be…I have come to a place in my life where I do strive to keep my home clean for one reason, I love having a beautiful home in which to live. 

My mother grew up in The Depression Era.  “Living the American Dream” by having your own home was a big thing back then.  Not to say it is not now, but, when you grew up having nothing…striving to build some kind of a dream in the shape of house becomes important. 

My father, was a steelworker in the haydays of the American Industrial expansion after WWII.  Some three blocks down from the house was the mill in which my father was able to afford buying the materials for building his American dream.  My mother would spend endless days parenting her children while my father slept in the frame and brick of the home he was building by himself.  There were no subcontractors or major home builders….just my dad.

My mother’s disciplined love for her husband and children bore great fruit when I come to think about it.  Each of the men she had reared grew to become important people in the lives they would touch.  One would be a bio-chemist in the early study of genetics, one would become successful in a real estate venture, another would be civicly involved in the protection of children through a county district attorney’s office, another would be found creating the cutting edge technology we share in everyday life today, and there was me…a man, a writer, a lyricist, a worker, a parent, a spouse and lover to my wife. 

For good and bad reasons, WE should always remember the enormous influence our parents have over our lives. Were there times when my mother made a mistake saying this or that to me at a time when saying one thing or another would have mattered…..yes.  In retrospect, she too was responding from a frame of reference designed for her by those who reared her. Would we simply consider these influences we would easily recognize how most errors, mistakes, or sins mind you can be corrected.

My mother IS a great lady.  In my mind, she was a person ahead of her time in creating a world that constantly evolved in to various versions of “the happiest she would ever be.”  Did she do all of what she wished?  In all liklihood….NO.  BUT, if you ask her if she is proud of the five boys she reared and the man she remained married to for fifty-plus years…..She would say…..YES!

Remembering her today…..helps me remember evermore the reasons for why ….

You are Loved…and LOVED RIGHT NOW!