Mom was an extremely cleanly person. In fact, she actually got a large reputation for it. As a result, she was a big "fan" of rinsing out a dish after you've eaten. That way when it's time to do the dishes you aren't faced with food all stuck and dried on.
When I was a teenager (of about 14 years) I had just scarfed down something to eat and was racing around to get out the door to go and meet my friends.
I was in the kitchen and had just decided to leave my plate in the sink and was in too much of a hurry to rinse it. Suddenly I heard Mom call out from another room, " Don't forget to rinse your plate!"
I picked it back up and thought, "How did she know I wasn't going to rinse it?"
I gave it the merest and quickest rinsing I could, then put it back into the bottom of the sink.
Mom walked into the kitchen right at that moment, placed her hand on my shoulder and said (in her regular voice),
" Don't just introduce the water to the plate. Let them meet and have a relationship."
I found it funny then and I've been chuckling over it for a couple days now.
Here's another memory:
For the last two years of Mom's life we lived together, but previously to that we each had our own apartments for more than a decade. It took a 50 minute bus ride to get to her apartment, but I didn't have to transfer (which is a wonderful thing during the winter months in this cold, Canadian city).
One weekend every month we called our "Long Weekend".
I'd take the bus to Mom's small apartment in a Seniors Building, do a "big" grocery shopping, which included a bunch of stuff to cook and bake with. Then we'd spend a 4-day "long weekend" working together in her tiny kitchen, cooking and baking and putting the food into little containers in her freezer for her to heat in her microwave throughout the month. While we worked together we sang, prayed, laughed and talked. Talk, talk, talk, talk.
I thought I knew my mother well at that point in life, but during our "weekends", I got to really delve into what made her tick and discover the amazing person she was.
It was during one of these marathon cooking/talking sessions that a shared memory came back for us to talk about. (Yes. This is a "flashback" within a "flashback")
When I was 7 years old my family lived on a small farm. It was the last year we lived with my father and to call our home "dysfunctional" is a gross understatement.
I had a dog named, Trapper. A naughty, little terrier that somebody had given to me. One late Saturday afternoon my father was hauling lumber in his pickup truck 20 yards from barn to shed and back again. Over and over.
Now, one of the ways Trapper was naughty is that he like to chase cars. He was always trying to bite the tires of a moving car or truck. I had already scolded him several times to stay away from Dad and his truck as he drove back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
I was in the house with Mom and finally heard the noise I'd been expecting and bracing myself to hear for the previous couple hours. I heard Trapper let out a big scream!
We all went running and I came barreling out of the kitchen to see Dad getting out of his truck. He said that had run over Trapper's back leg. Dad was always looking for a reason to "shoot them d**n dogs" (my brother had a dog too), so I knew there would be no trip to the veterinarian.
Mom went immediately to Trapper to inspect his back leg that had been run over by Dad's truck. By some miracle, his leg had been in a place where the soil beneath had been loose and covered in moss, so his leg didn't appear to be broken. Mom said, "Let's go and heat some warm milk to give to the dog."
As I was sitting with Mom at her kitchen table, peeling carrots and we were recalling these events I said,
"I remember thinking at the time, 'If Trapper's leg is broken, giving him some warm milk isn't going to help him much' ".
I realized that Mom had stopped peeling and was just looking at me with a small, sweet smile. It suddenly dawned on me ( after 'only' 30 years) what had really been going on.
I said to Mom, "The warm milk wasn't to make the dog feel better, it was to make your daughter feel better."
Mom didn't say anything, but the smile on her face just got bigger for a moment, then she went back to peeling her carrot. As an adult I had finally been able to share something with Mom that I couldn't share as a child.
During that decade of "long weekends" we had many of those types of moments. Moments when I came to understand fully something I had missed as a child and it drew us so close to each other.
In the margins of my Bible you will see several question marks. I put them there when I don't understand something about a story, but mostly when I don't understand the "why" of what my Heavenly Father is doing. But when I do come to finally understand and I'm removing the question mark, I know that He has that same sweet smile Mom used to get whenever I would "get" something. Not because He's proud that I'm smarter, but because we can now share something we previously couldn't and we can enjoy and delight in a new closeness between us.
Do I have any clever or profound point to make? No. I just wanted to share something that mattered to me ... with you.
Thanks for listening.
Love Laura-Lee
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| "Here. I made you a silly hat out of a Coffee Filter for your birthday. Put it on your head, Mom." "Okay. Now I want a picture of me wearing the hat you made me." (1996) |
