MEMORIES

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New Year's Eve I went to my mother’s home to get her a few things to make her feel at home in the rehabilitation center. Since it is the Christmas season her home is still decorated.

I don’t usually roam about her house, but I took the time to leisurely stroll and take a look at things she displayed for Christmas and throughout the year.

That's NOT the baby Jesus she's holding

On a windowsill sat a manger, perhaps 70 some odd years old. By now it is missing pieces, baby Jesus was replaced and looms larger than his parents and the three wise men. The stable still has it’s straw roof and stone like painted walls, and one of the sheep has a missing foot but still manages to stand with some clever positioning. It took me back to Christmas’ past, the Brooklyn apartment, and the magic that once was as a child.

Along the way I found this wooden music box I carved for Mom so many years ago I forgot I did it! I opened the box and it still played! She always encouraged me to be creative. There is a bowl and pitcher and a vase I bought for her with my own money while in college. Money I could have used for myself, yet this made me feel so much better! I reminded me of the days I spent coming home from school or work, a hot meal sitting in the stove waiting for me, meaning she cared.

Of course one thing she never liked was for anyone to sit in her living room, and made a stink if anyone dared to. Coming from a dirt-poor family, her living room was like her bedroom and the bedspreads, a sign of ‘nice things’, her having something special that said she was of value. She didn’t need those icons: we are all feeling the pain of her aging everyday and have been for years. Being how she wasn’t around, I sat in the chair, respectfully, knowing if I were caught, a wooden spoon could come raining down upon my senseless noggin! I call that flirting with danger!

But the thing that brought the most bittersweet moments came when I went into her back bedrooms. There on one wall sat some pictures of her kids all together, smiling. It was something she arranged and it must mean a lot to her. On her dresser was a picture of me as a baby, maybe a year old. As I wandered there was yet another surprise, my wedding picture on her bedroom wall, TLW (The Little Woman) and I posing in a gazebo on Byron Lake in Sayville, over 41 year ago!

I guess one should suspect these surprises to occur, but she is mom, a higher authority, someone to love and respect, who taught and nurtured and established the kind of children she wanted us to be. I have four beautiful sisters with inner beauty as well, for that I am grateful.

And so someday, when God finally calls her, I will ask for some small object from her home, and I will place it somewhere in my house that is not intrusive, but I will see everyday and remember her. I think that is what she is like: not intrusive or attention seeking and quiet, and that is what she would want.