Mama,
I just wanted to tell you today not only how much I love you, but remind you of all the reasons why I do.
-I remember being little and believing that the woman on the Sun-Maid Raisins box was you. When I was in the grocery store mere days ago, I had the choice of buying cheap local raisins for my cereal, but I bought the Sun-Maid Raisins because seeing that pretty girl on the box reminds me of loving you and makes you feel close, even when I’m all the way on the other side of the world (And, in case you’re not catching the underlying meaning here, paying extra money on The World Race based on sentimentalities alone is unheard of.)
-I love how you used to tell us Bible stories every single morning (complete with picture-cards). Even during my early life when I didn’t follow God, you instilled a respect and a belief within me for Him that was foundational in helping me truly know Him when I became older. Sometimes I think of lying on that grey carpet in the morning and hearing your voice reading those stories. To this day, when someone says the name “Jochabed” in perfct Hebrew, I still think they are mispronouncing the much more natural sounding “Jock-a-bed”.
-I love that time you busted down the road at 90mph so we wouldn’t be late for The Jason Project. In all honesty, I don’t even remember what the Jason Project WAS, but I do remember it as the first time I saw triple digits on the speedometer, all from a woman who got excited when the needle pointed to 55 mph.
-I love that you tried to correct the bad habits you saw forming in me at an early age by a rewards-based system rather than a guilt-inflicted one, as some mothers do. Of course, what I am referring to is how you would award each of us points 1-5 based on who got up first every morning Monday through Friday, the person with the highest score being rewarded with ice cream from Gilbow’s Drug Store each Friday afternoon. Don’t even try to deny that this elaborate system of accountability was created for any other child besides me.
-What I love even more about you is that when my siblings were ranging anywhere fom 10-25 points weekly, you still bought me and my consistently measly FIVE POINTS a chocolate chip ice cream cone every week anyway.
-I love your ability to always and with deep, wrenching conviction, fully believe with all of your heart that any and all ailments spring from a neglect to take one’s sinus medication.
-I love that you always made holidays special for us, even when we didn’t have very much money. I’ll never forget that Easter I got that ornate, ceramic easter bunny in my gallon-ice-cream-container-turned-basket. Even though it came from the dollar store, I thought it cost a hundred dollars, and I had never felt so special to get something so pretty and so expensive.
-I love that you didn’t make us eat grilled cheese sandwhiches at fast-food restaurants.
-I love that time I was eight years old and you found that poem I wrote about The Civil War. I was always so shy about anything that I created, but you were so encouraging and affirming that I was confident to explore a part of what makes up so much of who I am today. Thanks for thinking I was something mighty good.
-I love that you showed me what it looks like to be dedicated to a man, to always honor him even when you don’t always agree with him, and to never, ever, ever defile him. I love that you illustrated every single day of your life what it means to commit your life completely in the service of your husband and family. Because of the amazing wife and mother you are, I know that when I get married, I can recall your example and always know the honorable choice to make in service of the ones I love most. Not the choice that inflates me, but the choice that allows me to become servant-like in total love and humility.
-I love that, even though I’m not the dancer that you are, I’ll look forward to the day that I can dance with my husband in the kitchen, because I think you figured out early on it’s the secret to keeping a marriage fun and exciting. However, I will not choose to swoon my beloved to the same tunes you and dad did, because, let’s be honest: Nights in White Satin is a creepy song.
-I love that you have been at every airport I’ve ever left from or came home to. I always felt so loved that miles never mattered to you (or dad). I have to admit, I’m a little misty-eyed just thinking of putting on my blue-suede shoes and boarding the plane to touch down in the land of the delta blues and seeing you waiting for me.
-I love that you let me listen to The Backstreet Boys and let me go through the phase of covering my walls in their posters. It was a time I really needed to live out on my own, and I thank you for not rolling your eyes at me, but relating to me with your David Cassidy stories. And thanks for being so open with us about your youth to relate such things as the Trampus story, which still tickles me when I think about it.
-I love that you always provided a fun alternative for us when we were not all able to do something fun together. I recall many times that when Erin, John and I didn’t get to do something because of our age that Lora and Mark got to do, you would play with us in the backyard or – be still, beating heart – take us to eat at McDonald’s, which made whatever previously-conceived immortal fun that Lora and Mark were, no doubt, going to experience, seem, in a word: Lame.
-I love that you would read to us each afternoon after lunch. Reading classics like The Hobbit instilled in me a love for fairy tales and fantasies and songs and epic stories…. And yet, we all know that The Hobbit was dwarfed by such literary masterpieces like The Beast from the East, which still thrills me, even all these years later, to imagine the depth of prose and poetic symmetry exhibited by Mr. R.L. Stine and his series of Goosebump books. No, seriously, I think your willingness to read EVERYONE’S book choice made me realize how much you loved us to suffer through such a blow to your intellect. In doing so, however, you gave me a love for many different genres, everything from mysteries to James Herriot’s Dog Stories. (Incidentally, thanks for comforting me when the inevitable tears sprang from some of James Herriot’s dogs that didn’t make it).
-I love that you stood by your convictions about things that made you unpopular with us, such as your decision to not let us get into neighborhood michief and celebrate Halloween with the rest of our friends. What I love even more is that you still let us dress up and give out candy, showing us that giving to others is always better. What I love most is that when it was all over, you let us simulate trick-or-treating by going to each room in the house and finding candy, and buying us a burger from Sonic (A rarer treat than even McDonald’s), finishing the night by turning off all the lights, piling onto a pallet on the floor, and watching old, black-and-white monster movies together for hours past our bedtime.
-I love that you never allowed us to fight with each other, say hurtful things, or hurt each other. I love that you respected our emotions enough to allow us to be angry for a time, but always expected us to apologize afterward. Because of your unashamed, uncompromising decisions that forced us to work our problems out, I have the four best friends I’ll ever have in my brothers and sisters, I can’t say thank you enough for this one, because in preferring Lora, Mark, Erin, and John, I know the value of family: Out of all things created by God for us, it is the greatest thing of all.
-I love that you homeschooled me. I know that you might, right now, believe your eyes have just played a foul trick on you, but I have come to mean this in the most sincere way. Thank you fo putting up with my bad attitude for so many years, because in the end, you really DID know what was best. Because of the education you instilled in me, I have come to find that I am far beyond what I would have been if you had given in to my demands for socialization. I found that even though I didn’t get to hang out with school friends every day, which was far more important to me at the time than God or education, you gave me something that will serve me for the rest of my life. Even though we never studied languages, you gave me the ability to grasp the concepts of tongues I never learned simply because you enabled me to learn mine so well. More than the subjects you taught me, you taught me to love well. Despite the fact that I spent eight or so years sulking about your decision to do what was best for me, I’ll be thanking you for it the rest of my life.
-I love that you gave up your dream of teaching kindergarten classes to teach me, who didn’t appreciate that you were sacrificing your dreams to give me a better life. I have never seen such a sacrificial heart in my entire life. Thank you for your grace, which showed me so much what God’s grace is really like.
-I love that, although you wanted me to wear the clown suit, you didn’t make me. You have no idea the depths in which I appreciate this, since mental cameras are sometimes more pristine than Kodaks and siblings can be cruel and unforgetting.
-I love that you never tired of being the lone attendee to innumerable on-the-spot concerts and plays. Even when you had dishes to do or scarce and precious alone time, I can still see you wearily trudging up the stairs to our room, innevitably knowing that it would all end in fire and tears when John, ever-so-conspicuously hidden behind the bed, would, without fail in every play, intentionally rush the stage, interrupting Erin’s Swan Princess dance with a full-body dive that pretty much summoned the end of mine and Ere’s meticulously planned program. Thanks for being there to console Erin and I who, mad as hornets, aired our list of grievances to you. I know each time you attended these fiascos, you must have known that you role as a spectator would transform into that of the sole witness to such personal affrontation. And yes… Thank you for punishing John, who deserved it every single time he turned The Nutcracker into WCW Monday Night Brawl. You are, indeed, a good and fair mother.
-I love that you always fed the cats that were our responsibility. I love that your heart was big enough for them (despite claiming that you detested and were personally revolted by them) to make sure that they always had enough Special Kitty formula to ensure that all the females would be healthy enough to bear litters of more cats that we would cry to keep. And, regardless of your daily threats of taking them all to the pound, I love that I don’t have one memory of you doing so until we were all in college.
-I love that you were mother to all my friends and that our house was their home. You showed me what it meant to be loving and welcoming to all people. Thank you for all the nights you made us popcorn and rented us movies, for my friends that you counselled when we had no one else we trusted as much as you. Thank you for listening to us, but being a mom instead of trying to be our friend. I think that may be one of the things that I will thank you for the most over the years, actually. Because of actually being mom, you have become my closest friend. Thank you for that friendship that has come with the passing of time and the maturity of many years.
Mom, if I don’t stop my list here, it won’t end. I could describe year after year after year of love you poured out on all of us and it would never scratch the surface of who you really are. I don’t fabricate or stretch the truth when I say that you are the most sacrificial, hard-working, diligent, contented, joyful, loving, woman of a healthy-constitution that ever lived (at least to my knowledge). I’ve probably learned more about life from watching yours than I have in living my own. I know God’s grace is infinite and unfathomable, but I feel like I understand it as tangibly as I can when I consider that I was born to you and daddy. Nothing I could have ever done before birth warranted you two as parents, and if I tried to work every single day of my life to pay God back, I wouldn’t be half-way by a hundred.
I love you so much. I hope you find these memories prettier than flowers.
1-4-3
*P.S. If you don’t get the private jokes, ask Erin or John to interpret for you 🙂
