Thinking about my Mother

I was ruminative in Sacrament Meeting today and this is what I wrote:

Mom wanted us to be well fed and not hungry, so she cooked and shopped on a budget and canned. She wanted us to look presentable, for people to see us the way she saw us, so she sewed and patched and washed and worked on our manners and cleanliness. She wanted us to be healthy so she made good food, did first aid, made us wash our hands, plunged infected feet into epsom salt and hot water,… She wanted us housed and comfortably housed, so she cleaned and quilted and tucked us in. From the beginning, from the very beginning, when for each of us food and shelter and clothing and health were her own flesh and blood. And almost as much for the first few months of life.

She loved music and so she sang and played the piano and the violin and got us piano lessons and scrimped somehow to afford trombones and violas and clarinets for school bands and cajoled us to go to church choir until we loved it as much as she did.

She loved to see our personalities unfold. She loved family and family traditions, she got us see our cousins and grandma and aunts and uncles, all those good childhood memories, she liked to tell us stories about family, but she loved telling us stories about ourselves just as much. She had a mischeivous sense of humor and remembering our little escapades as little mischief-makers would set her laughing until she cried. Papa had the photo slides but it was usually Mom who would tell the stories that went with them.

She hated to see us live below our potential (still does). She bore our emotional burdens deeply, her worries about us and our future deeply. She wanted to know that we loved her back, she wanted us to feel that all of the things she did were not a utility but a labor of love.

She had compassion and had a hard time punishing us because she felt her misery herself. When we got ourselves into trouble of our own making, it wasn’t us learning a lesson that was at the forefront of her mind–it was helping us out of our hole.

She wanted us to be worthwhile, and somehow never quite gave up on manners, not fighting with each other, and chores. She would despair, pull herself together, and try some other scheme.

In much of this she was a normal mother. In much of this, she was unique.

In all of this, she was our mother.