Simple Hobby Homesteading

I’ve lived on this earth longer than my own mother did and I’m only 35 (at least I think I’m 35… right around there at least. After 20 I really stopped keeping track…born in 1978, you do the math.) I had 9 years with her and that’s longer than some have with their mothers but still seems not long enough for me. With each day the memories fade, her face is the one I see in the pictures I have and she’s changed… no longer the tired, hurried, stressed out single mother of two but rather an epic superwoman who never raised her voice, made amazing well balanced suppers, gorgeous hair and perfect makeup and whisked us away to fantastic summer vacations.

Truth be told I only remember one vacation with my mother (with our whole maternal side of the family in fact) and on that vacation she let us watch “Elephant Man” and she chased a bat around our cabin with a tennis racket screaming that we may all die from rabies. I had nightmares for years!

Perhaps the fading memories have always given me the opportunity to wonder… I do an awful lot of wondering and have ever since the day she suddenly died.

I wonder if I’ll ever see her again in heaven, knowing that I won’t care as I’m enveloped by the awesomeness of God which will sustain me completely… I still wonder.

I wonder if she knows that I only searched the crowds for her face for 20 years instead of a lifetime and if she’s disappointed about that.

I wonder if she’s mad that I haven’t cared enough to visit her grave more than once in my life and that I didn’t take any flowers…

I wonder if she knows that I found out what her favorite flower was only a year ago…

I wonder if she knows that in her death she created a bond between father and daughter that never would have come to be without her leaving…

I wondered for so many years what I did wrong to make her go away…

I wondered for too many years why God was so mean to take a little girl’s mamma…now I thank God for taking her.

I wonder if I’m wiser than she now that I have lived more years… I highly doubt it.

I wonder if she knew that I noticed how kind she was to people but at the same time how she could be one heck of a sarcastic little stinker…

I wonder why she never talked about Jesus to us and why I never saw her reading a Bible.

I wonder what her touch felt like because now I forget… her arms around me… a snuggle in the bed we shared for so many years because I didn’t want to sleep alone…

I wonder if she watched and heard from above as my brother looked at some kids playing and simply said, “I wonder if they know how lucky they are to have a mom”… good to know I wasn’t the only one wondering. I wondered the same thing but never would have said it out loud.

I wonder if my mom knows that I have horses and it was those years hanging out at the stable while she rehabilitated abused horses that sparked my intense and deep love for these animals. I wonder if she sees how free I am when I ride… free of sadness, free of missing her, free of guilt and totally connected with her very essence. I wonder if she would bury her face in the neck of a horse and breathe deeply, thinking there’s no scent so amazing and intoxicating. Yup, I do that.

I wonder if she knows I still vividly remember sitting on the floor in front of her while she rocked in an old wicker rocking chair and read my brother and me snippits of her diary. We always begged for more but she would never disclose the personal stuff… I wonder if that diary (reached novel proportions) will ever show up. I wonder if that sparked my love for writing…

I wonder if she thought I was silly when I stood on the stairs leading up to my bedroom the day we left to go to my dad’s for the weekend (we usually spent it at my grandparents with dad visiting us there) begging her not to make me go… it was the last day I saw her.

I wonder if in her death she knew that she created a bond between a brother and sister that few siblings will ever know.

I wonder why in the world she ever let me pack my own suitcase for the weekend trips to my dad’s house and why she ever bought me red tights and pink dresses (I seemed to love that combo together, ugh!).

I wonder if she knows that through her divorce she taught me to hold on to my own marriage tighter than anything else in life. I will never get divorced, about that I do not wonder.

I wonder what she loved so much about Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and why I love it too.

I wonder why she never got me past the very first piano lesson book when she was always an amazingly talented piano player (the word pianist still always makes me giggle).

I wonder if she knows how many times I have listened to the recording made of her playing piano and singing in my grandpa’s church, just goofing around and having a good time with me, her sister, and her mother…

I wonder what kind of a grandmother she would be to my own two sons… would she insist we visit Wisconsin more often… would she come spend weeks in Indiana with us? I wonder if they would realize that I got me scatterbrained antics directly from her…

I wonder if she knows that the thought of her watching me from above kept me from doing a lot of stupid things growing up… now I simply wonder if she is in heaven…

I wonder if she knows that I have no idea the date she died, no recollection of her funeral, and I was coaxed out of grieving under a bed by a simple roll of pennies…

I wonder if she cares that I don’t celebrate her birthday with a big cryfest and some years don’t even really think of her on May 10th. She will always be woven into the very fabric of my life and being but I sentementality is not one of my strong points…

I wonder if she knew that I always respected her for working 2 and sometimes 3 jobs to support my brother and me. She’d take us with her to the laundrymat she worked at in the evenings and we’d do our homework, eat junk out of the vending machines and have races in the laundry carts. Those were actually really fun times!

I wonder if God shared my prayers with her…

Wow, I cetainly seem to wonder a lot. Mother’s Day is hard and glorious at the same time for me. I celebrate my own motherhood with two amazing sons but wish I could wrap my arms around the woman who gave me life and hear the story from her lips one more time about the day she welcomed me into the world and the crazy amount of hair I had. Hold your mothers close if they are still on this earth 🙂