Happy Birthday Mom

How ironic that the question Leslie at Ink Interrupted asks us today at Tuesday Coffee Chat is "Are You Missing Someone?"   Why is it ironic?  Because today is my mother's 90th birthday. She departed for the spirit world when she was 67 after many years of struggling with crippling Rheumatoid Arthritis and in the end, COPD.  That was 23 years ago, and it feels like it's been forever. Now that I have just turned 63, being 67 doesn't seem so very old. 

Birthdays at our house were always celebrated events, though not with huge parties and lots of cash expended like is done now.  But there was always cake and balloons and gifts from each family member,  and parties with our friends when we were kids.  As we got up in grade school we began orchestrating birthdays for Mom, making her a cake, and smuggling flowers and gifts into the house, and we always knew she loved our efforts.  I always liked that her birthday was exactly one month after mine. 

My mother excelled at all things domestic, she was a good cook, an excellent baker, and kept a white-glove spotless house.  She saw that we had nice things to wear and pretty bedrooms. I remember her spending almost all day on Monday of every week washing laundry, and all day Tuesday ironing it, and I marvel at that now.  There is no way I would dedicate two days of my life each week to doing that, and yet that's the was it was done back then, everything had to be ironed.

Sadly, my memories of my mother are bittersweet, because we didn't have the kind of close relationship I have with my daughter.  My older sister was her favorite, and my younger sister was Dad's, and I was lost somewhere in the middle, a misfit who didn't really have a place no matter how hard I tried, always being her helper with projects, and Dad's too. 

As I moved into the teen years and began to develop my own way of seeing and thinking about things, we clashed at many points, though in reality I was a very well behaved teen, never partying or doing anything that would have been considered out of line.  But I did things like wear my hair straight down and parted in the middle and long maxi dresses, opposing the VietNam war, and even questioning the religion I was raised in.  She didn't understand, and I'm sure I was an embarrassment  to her in our small town  where maintaining middle class status was so very important. After all, my Dad was a prominent business man in the community and a member of the City Council!

I left home shortly after graduation, as in ran away, escaped, and didn't return to begin college in the fall as was originally part of the plan.  My life from there spiraled into directions unfathomable to them, and the distance between us grew.  However, my daughter, born when I was 21, brought joy to their lives, and we did go home to visit from time to time.

Shortly after my daughter turned one my husband decided we would move to Denver, and then shortly after that he joined the Army and was eventually sent to Germany, with us following him there.  I was never to reside in my home state again.

Over the years Mom and Dad came to visit a few times and we returned home for Christmas a few, but communication was different back then.  Long distance calls were expensive and Dad imposed a 7 minutes, once a week call limit on Mom.  She was a wonderful letter writer and I wish I had those letters now.  She also sent a Christmas care package each year filled with her baking and I miss those boxes more than you can imagine. 

I wasn't able to go home when Mom spent her last days in the hospital, there was no money for gas to drive that far, and my father refused to help me, telling me to wait and he would pay for my ticket home for her funeral, which he did.  But I didn't get to say goodbye, which hurts my heart to this day.

Twenty some years later, I miss her ever so much more. I think about how she would have loved unlimited phone calls, and quick message texting and sharing photos so easily.  I think about her view of the world, and how she saw mine, and some of the things she tried to tell me that I didn't understand then... but I do now.  I understand so much more, and although we were two very different people from different times, in some ways we are the same. She loved her children fiercely, she loved to bake, she loved to visit with people wherever we went, and she loved to write... I think she would have made a wonderful blogger!

The heart-shaped plate you see above is Franciscan's Desert Rose pattern.  Mom loved it and collected it piece by piece as we grew up, with us adding pieces to her collection for Christmas and birthdays.  We used those Desert Rose dishes every day, and I never thought I liked them all that much. But when she passed they became mine, because my sister intended to sell them and I disagreed, and now they grace a china cabinet all their own at my house, and I look at them and realize why she loved them so much.  They really are very beautiful... and in her own way so was she.  I miss her.