Happy Birthday Mom
Karen Lu Schwartz
For more about Mom:
The Blueberry Incident
There is no talk of blueberries in my family – well, at least not without mentioning the blueberry incident. Eyes twinkle, hands rub together gleefully, posture adjusted to lean in a moment to hear the tale retold.
Again.
And Again.
Its not much of a story, yet every time I lower my eyes, squirm a bit, and blush appropriately. But in truth, I have grown accustomed to this tale. I’d probably miss it if they failed to tell the story.
We grew up on a farm. We had a goat.
One morning when I was three or four, I was outside playing when I burst back into the house exclaiming,”Mommy, I need a bucket!”
“Well, ok,” she says, “But why do you need a bucket?”
“Theres blueberries all over the yard!”
Never has any child been quite so ecstatic over goat turds.
Fast forward fourteen years to my high school graduation. Right before the actual graduation ceremony there was a religious ceremony, a kind of blessing for the graduates, and I was one of the speakers.
I stood beside Pastor Lee as he was introducing me to the standing room only crowd. As he spoke I started to understand that he was leading up to a story, a story he got from my mom, a story that, as he said, “Illustrates [my] exuberance and lust for life,” a story about mistaking goat turds for blueberries.
Then it was my turn to speak…
Its interesting to me how the laughter over the tale, the pre-emptive giggles, surpass the actual humor in the story. Yet still it has value as one of the stories that hold us together, make us a family. Our family story a weave of a multitude of little stories with a few big stories to give shape and context to the rest.
What about you? What little and big stories have been woven into the culture of your family? What story embarrasses you every time you hear it, but if they didn’t tell it, you’d miss it?
Go to your blogs, run, skedaddle. Write your story then leave a link here in the comments so that we can all go read your story and laugh with/at you.
"Enough with the lips moving and the sound coming out"
Or, what my husband said to his mother-in-law.
Before you gasp in horror (or secretly cheer) they were just joking around. It made me gasp, but for a different reason. That was just the sort of thing my dad would say. I could see him sitting there with a full on belly laugh, his feet sticking straight out in front of him (he always stuck his feet straight out when he belly laughed), if he heard my husband say that. He would have loved that line, and he would have filed it away in the back of his brain for future reference looking for a really good opportunity to whip it out and use it.
I miss my dad, but I’m struck by how similar he was to my husband.
What about you? Do you find similarities between your significant other and one of your parents?
Coffee with Mom
After class I stopped by Mom’s place and dragged her out for a walk. It’s so nice to live nearby. It’s nice to be able to stop by and say hey let’s take a walk and then stop and get some coffee. Today we walked to Chanterelles in Edmonds. Great little cafe.
My Mother’s Gift
In 1991 my mom brought home Matt; I was not happy. Although I had moved out, I still had a room at the homestead – a room I needed to clear of my belongings so it could go to this new kid. But that’s not the whole reason I was upset.
Taking in kids was nothing new in our home. I had four younger brothers and we had all, at one time or another, brought home friends to stay for extended periods of time. My parents took in my cousins, kids who had aged out of the foster care system, and runaways (there was always a phone call to the parents to let them know where the kids were). My parents would not turn their backs on a child in need. Eventually they decided to start taking in foster children, and Matt was the first of many special needs placements my parents welcomed into their home.
But Matt was scary. He was a 16-year-old, severely developmentally challenged kid that had been held in a motel room 24 hours a day for months because they could not find a home that would take him. After time in the foster care system, Matt had an attitude, and he was very difficult to care for because of his medical needs as well. Along with an improperly formed brain, Matt had cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus; he functioned at the level of a two year old. He was difficult to look at. His hair grew in funny little tufts around the scars from all his brain surgeries, he shuffled along all bent over, he had a vocabulary of only 50 words, and he was a head banger. By head banger I mean that whenever he was frustrated or angry or for whatever other reason he would haul off and slam his head on whatever hard surface was handy, often drawing blood.
He terrified me. I did not like the idea of this kid living in my parents house.
Why am I using this Mother’s Day post to tell you about Matt? Because Matt became a part of our family. My Mother would not give up on him. No matter how hard it was, no matter how many late nights she sat up wondering “what have I gotten myself into,” she would not be just one more foster home that sent him back to that agency. He deserved better than that. And we learned a valuable lesson about acceptance and love, because we all came to love Matt. As he became more accepted and comfortable in our home he started to blossom at school, and at church where Mom took him every Sunday. By the time he passed away in 2000, he had touched so many lives that his funeral was standing room only. An entire community had learned a lesson about acceptance and love.
Mom has always been a caretaker. It’s her calling, her gift, and she’s very good at making people feel better when they are ill. When my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October of 2006, we were all devastated, but we all knew that he was in the best hands. While the doctors may be prescribing the chemo and performing surgeries, and the nurses attending to vital stats, it was Mom that cared for him and fought for him. She was the one that kept him going, and made sure he kept his brain active, and held his hand through the emotional roller-coaster of dying.
My Dad was never a big talker, that just wasn’t his style, but Mom always made us talk on the phone together even if we didn’t think we had anything to say. Dad and I would sit there on the phone, sometimes it felt like forever, trying to think of something to say to each other. We talked a lot about baseball, we talked about mom, we talked about work – his and mine, we talked a little bit about the cancer and it’s side effects, we talked about the weather, but most importantly, we talked.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my Dad. It’s just that both of us are introverts – and completely unskilled in the art of small-talk. The point is, I had conversations with my dad, about nothing and everything, that I hold dear in my heart, and I wouldn’t have had them if she hadn’t made us talk.
She is the glue that holds our family together, and through the most difficult time of her life, she found ways to meet each of our needs.
In the six months since my father’s death, Mom packed up and moved to Seattle. Sure part of it was to be near me. But really she’s here because she’s taken over as the primary caretaker for my 97 year old grandmother. And she’s loving every minute of it, because helping people feel better is what she does, it’s her gift.
Happy Mothers Day, Mom. Thank you, and I love you.
Happy Mothers Day to the rest of you moms out there too.
