When I’m lying on my stomach in bed and Scout comes up and lays herself down the middle of my back and falls asleep.
The picture of my mother and me, when I was a newborn, where she is pressing her cheek to mine and has this look of pure happiness on her face (I look like a cross-eyed blob).
The way that Jack knows how to kiss by bumping lips like a human (in addition to his normal kit kisses).
The picture of J, J, and D (nieces and nephews) on my mother’s front lawn. The picture must have been taken in the Summer cuz they’re all in shorts and they all have ice creams in their hands. The girls are laughing hard – heads thrown back, mouths open wide in what I hear as screaming laughter, feet kicking in the air – and my nephew is sitting there looking totally confused.
The way that H scrunches the back of my shirt in his big ole hands when he has his arms wrapped around me and is kissing me.
Sitting here, on the couch in the front room, browsing the site and once in a while glancing up and out the French doors to see H and Jake running back and forth, up and down the side yard. H is laughing and Jake is barking . . . dorks.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Happy Birthday, Mom
If my mother were alive, she would be 80 today. I have a hard time imagining my mother at 80 years old. I imagine her as my grandmother was at 80 since that’s the only thing my imagination has to draw on. They looked a lot alike and their temperaments were the same – calm, wise, loving and kind so the 80 year old mother in mind’s eye is probably pretty close to what she would be if she were alive.
My mother was a late bloomer. She didn’t marry until she was in her 30s which, for her generation, was pretty old. My grandparents didn’t seem to mind that she married a white man and I sometimes wonder if that had to do with her age.
According to my mother, she was a wallflower, a very shy girl growing up and, if she hadn’t met and married my father, she probably would have been an “old maid”. I could absolutely see my mother having never married and being perfectly happy with that but, in retrospect, I’m glad she did marry and have children because if she hadn’t . . . I would never have gotten to know her.
I have a picture of my mother’s family taken when my mother was about 2. The picture was taken in the late 20s, in that serious style that seems to have been the fashion back then. Everyone is standing around my seated grandmother, very straight and very serious, except my mother. She’s standing, leaning casually toward my grandmother, an arm crooked and sitting on my grandmother’s knee, one of my her little socks has fallen down around her ankle, her little shoes are scuffed in the front and . . . she is grinning. I look at it and imagine that her wonderful sense of humor was in place even then and is sneaking out in her little grin.
I love this picture. I love looking at my mother in this picture and imagining her as this happy little baby with her entire life ahead of her. A happy childhood of camping trips at the seaside, eating oysters fresh from the ocean, being a shy wallflower who always seems to have had a good sense of herself.
My mother graduated high school in the camp where my family was interned during the war. After she was released from the camp she and her older sisters weren’t allowed to return to the West Coast for five years. They chose to go to New York City where my mother, ironically, worked for the INS for several years.
As children, my mother kept from us that she had been interned during the war – she didn’t hide it, she just never brought it up and my family never did either. Their attitude was that it happened, it was over, no need to dwell. When I was older and realized that there was pretty much no way that my family could have avoided being interned I asked her and she talked with me about it.
One of the things I love so much about my mother is her nature, she was very zen-like. Never bitter. Never angry and, frankly, she had many things in her life which would have made many others bitter and angry. When she talked about the camps she said that it really wasn’t that bad at all – they had a roof over their head, three meals a day, they were able to go to school, have friends and, occasionally, social events.
The reality is that there were four families in each one room building. Each family had a corner which was theirs and there was no privacy. They were given rice everyday and a small amount of meat and vegetables which they had to stretch between six people. My mother says that it was hardest on my grandparents because they were hurt – they truly loved America and thought of themselves as Americans and so were hurt and confused about being locked up.
It was on the train ride back to the West Coast where my mother and father met. She and her older sisters were moving back to the West Coast and my father was moving out here as well. They struck up a conversation and, since he was new to the bay area, my mother offered to show him around. She gave him her phone number and, the rest is history.
Anyways, I miss my mother every single day of my life. She was someone that I feel privileged to have known let alone to have had as my mother. She was my hero.
We were like most moms and daughters and we fought about stupid things that seemed important at the time. I said things to her that I regret and wish I could take back but, the bottom line is . . . every single thing that is good in me I got from her. Every. Single. Thing.
So many people worry that they’re turning into their mothers. I regret that I can never be my mother. I’ll never be as good a person as my mother was, never be as brave, never be as heroic as my mother was. And this is not a guilt or sorrow driven idealization of my mother. Even when she was alive I was aware that I could never have done many of the amazingly brave and heroic things that my mother did in her life and always marveled at how she could deal with some of the things she dealt with.
I once asked her about some of these things, how she could deal with them and her response was simple and matter-of-fact. She told me, “You guys were the most valuable and important thing in my life and if it had to be done, I had to do it. It was hard and many times I was terrified and I would have nightmares but, you were my responsibility and I was going to do whatever it took to make sure you guys were happy and healthy.” This wasn’t said with any hint of martyrdom or self-aggrandizement, just a simple, thoughtful statement and I was, and still am, in awe of her.
So, happy birthday mom. You are my hero. You are everything that is good in me, I truly love you more than life itself, and I miss you more than I can ever express.
My mother was a late bloomer. She didn’t marry until she was in her 30s which, for her generation, was pretty old. My grandparents didn’t seem to mind that she married a white man and I sometimes wonder if that had to do with her age.
According to my mother, she was a wallflower, a very shy girl growing up and, if she hadn’t met and married my father, she probably would have been an “old maid”. I could absolutely see my mother having never married and being perfectly happy with that but, in retrospect, I’m glad she did marry and have children because if she hadn’t . . . I would never have gotten to know her.
I have a picture of my mother’s family taken when my mother was about 2. The picture was taken in the late 20s, in that serious style that seems to have been the fashion back then. Everyone is standing around my seated grandmother, very straight and very serious, except my mother. She’s standing, leaning casually toward my grandmother, an arm crooked and sitting on my grandmother’s knee, one of my her little socks has fallen down around her ankle, her little shoes are scuffed in the front and . . . she is grinning. I look at it and imagine that her wonderful sense of humor was in place even then and is sneaking out in her little grin.
I love this picture. I love looking at my mother in this picture and imagining her as this happy little baby with her entire life ahead of her. A happy childhood of camping trips at the seaside, eating oysters fresh from the ocean, being a shy wallflower who always seems to have had a good sense of herself.
My mother graduated high school in the camp where my family was interned during the war. After she was released from the camp she and her older sisters weren’t allowed to return to the West Coast for five years. They chose to go to New York City where my mother, ironically, worked for the INS for several years.
As children, my mother kept from us that she had been interned during the war – she didn’t hide it, she just never brought it up and my family never did either. Their attitude was that it happened, it was over, no need to dwell. When I was older and realized that there was pretty much no way that my family could have avoided being interned I asked her and she talked with me about it.
One of the things I love so much about my mother is her nature, she was very zen-like. Never bitter. Never angry and, frankly, she had many things in her life which would have made many others bitter and angry. When she talked about the camps she said that it really wasn’t that bad at all – they had a roof over their head, three meals a day, they were able to go to school, have friends and, occasionally, social events.
The reality is that there were four families in each one room building. Each family had a corner which was theirs and there was no privacy. They were given rice everyday and a small amount of meat and vegetables which they had to stretch between six people. My mother says that it was hardest on my grandparents because they were hurt – they truly loved America and thought of themselves as Americans and so were hurt and confused about being locked up.
It was on the train ride back to the West Coast where my mother and father met. She and her older sisters were moving back to the West Coast and my father was moving out here as well. They struck up a conversation and, since he was new to the bay area, my mother offered to show him around. She gave him her phone number and, the rest is history.
Anyways, I miss my mother every single day of my life. She was someone that I feel privileged to have known let alone to have had as my mother. She was my hero.
We were like most moms and daughters and we fought about stupid things that seemed important at the time. I said things to her that I regret and wish I could take back but, the bottom line is . . . every single thing that is good in me I got from her. Every. Single. Thing.
So many people worry that they’re turning into their mothers. I regret that I can never be my mother. I’ll never be as good a person as my mother was, never be as brave, never be as heroic as my mother was. And this is not a guilt or sorrow driven idealization of my mother. Even when she was alive I was aware that I could never have done many of the amazingly brave and heroic things that my mother did in her life and always marveled at how she could deal with some of the things she dealt with.
I once asked her about some of these things, how she could deal with them and her response was simple and matter-of-fact. She told me, “You guys were the most valuable and important thing in my life and if it had to be done, I had to do it. It was hard and many times I was terrified and I would have nightmares but, you were my responsibility and I was going to do whatever it took to make sure you guys were happy and healthy.” This wasn’t said with any hint of martyrdom or self-aggrandizement, just a simple, thoughtful statement and I was, and still am, in awe of her.
So, happy birthday mom. You are my hero. You are everything that is good in me, I truly love you more than life itself, and I miss you more than I can ever express.
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