Four memories of my mother stand out for me.
The first is when we’re very young, not yet in school. I remember the three of us, Scott, Wayne and Sue, running around and disobeying and shouting and teasing and quarreling so much that mom just went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Not our best moment, and I suppose in a sense not hers. But that was mom: always evenhanded outside, even when in turmoil inside.
The second is about the same age. I’m sure we were stuck inside and bored, and getting on mom’s nerves again. The eternal cry: there’s nothing to do. That’s when mom showed up with a fondu or sauce caddy, with multiple small dishes full of interesting things: wet coffee grounds, dirt, beans, sugar or salt crystals, I’m not sure what all. “Just feel,” she said. I don’t remember that it kept us occupied too long, but that was mom telling us to stop and feel, discover and enjoy the world around us.
The third memory is from years later. I was in high school, and working at a cannery. I rode my bike every day on the bike trail along River Road. One day, some of the incidental glass on the trail caused a flat. I complained to mom about it the next day. The day after, as I rode along that trail I found mom in the middle of a mile-long stretch, sweeping. That was mom, caring, solution oriented, even when the solution was invisible to others.
The last memory is from my college years. One year I took a trip to Europe and didn’t have the money to go back to school that year. That year I took our dog Shayna on a lot of walks. One day we happened on a bird nest with chicks, and Shayna scooped them up without a thought. I told mom and she said I shouldn’t have let the dog do that. “That’s nature, mom,” I said, “you can’t change nature.” But mom saw it differently. She educated herself about dog training, and a couple years later she told me proudly, “Shayna and I saw some baby chicks today, and she behaved.” That was mom, caring about what we learn from our world and what we do to shape it.
I feel like the disease that took mom slowly put her back in a locked bathroom, only this time unable, not unwilling to communicate with us. And yet even this time it was on her terms. She never lost the grace and openness and underlying love that marked her life.
