Super Mom

My mom was a good mother. I know, almost everybody has fond feelings toward their mother, right? After all, she is the one that carries us until we are born, feed and nurtures us, picks us up and brushes us off when we fall, and watches over us as we grow. Some moms, however, are easily overwhelmed and are generally not able to juggle all the things that come with keeping a family in order and functioning smoothly. Lucky for my siblings and I, our mother was. She was also good at giving us chances to grow as a person, whether she realized she was doing it or not, letting us try things on our own.  I remember one time in particular time when mom humored me so I could learn something for myself.

At a certain point in grade school I was a pretty avid learner of earth science. I was at an age when I was a sponge for anything and everything that explained how our world worked and how we interacted with it. I found it all extremely interesting. One day at school we learned about glass. No particular kind of glass, just glass in general. When I learned that glass came from sand that was heated in an oven, a light bulb clicked on in my brain. Bless her heart, my mom allowed me to place a cookie sheet full of sand in her kitchen oven. I don't know how hot the stove was turned up to or how long it was in there, but of course nothing happened. No doubt mom knew that nothing would happen, but she didn't tell me that. She gave me a cookie sheet and use of her oven. My dad would have just told me it wouldn't work and would have refused to let me do it. Mom most likely didn't know the type of sand used to make glass needed to be silica, and she most likely didn't know that it had to be super-heated to over 2,000 degrees to melt. It wouldn't have mattered if she had. She just knew I needed to try it for myself, and I love her for it.

When I was little I had a lot of ear trouble and I would wake frequently in the middle of the night with a raging, painful earache and cry out in the night. My mother would hear me whimpering and crying and come to me, soothe me the best she could, then take me out and put me in the recliner in the living room and bundle me in cozy blankets. She would then go to the stove and warm up my prescription ear drops. Let me tell you, the feeling of that warm, oily medicine dribbling down into my hurting ear canal was the most wonderful feeling in the universe. She would gently massage my hurting ear, making sure the healing liquid found its way to its destination. She would then put a little piece of cotton in to keep the medicine where it belonged and would make sure I was okay there before returning to her bed a few feet away there in the living room. Between the recliner and their bed was the source of heat for our little, one-bedroom house: a free-standing oil heater. When it was running and had flames dancing around inside, they shone a soothing little display of reassuring light onto the ceiling. I would fall asleep in the recliner watching the tiny light show above me, feeling like the luckiest boy in the world. Thanks, mom.

The things you remember most vividly in your life are the experiences you had that were at either end of the emotion scale--either very traumatic, or very warm and loving.  Experiences involving mom were always the good kind.

I remember another time I was overcome with love towards mom. I had done something bad--bad enough to be banished to bed without supper by dad. Mom was not going to see me end the day missing a meal. I don't remember exactly if she argued it with my dad or not, but I seem to recall a heated discussion going on in the living room. A couple hours later, as I lay there on my bed feeling sorry for myself and angry at dad, mom came in with a full plate of dinner and placed it next to me on my bed. I was facing the wall, and I turned toward the door after she left and was face to face with a plate of hot food, inches from my face. As I lay there watching the curls of steam rising from the plate I was just so overcome with love for my mom I think I started crying again. There was something in the wispy tendrils of steam that spoke to me. They spoke of love and labor and nurturing. Mom did that for me. Moms should all do that for their kids. The kids that never felt that in their lives are kids I feel sorry for. They are the ones that grow up troubled, angry, and confused.