When Mama Calls

 

I was driving to Costco yesterday, my only outside errand for the day. It wouldn’t take long, I just needed 3 items, and it’s not far from home. I tried to pick an off-hour to avoid the warehouse crowds, but that never works. There’s no easy in-and-out at Costco.

Just as the arrow turned green and I made the left onto Laguna Canyon Road, Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” came on the radio. Immediately my tears began flowing.

My mom always liked that song. She’d quote it sometimes when she called me. And she always sang the last three notes of it as “cha-cha-cha!”
I cried all the way to Costco. Ugly face, gasping breath crying. Between gasps I said out loud “Hi Mom! I hear you!” like I’ve been doing whenever something unusual appears that reminds me of her, like when a flock of pelicans flew over my apartment the day after she died. Mom loved watching them fly; I’ve never seen pelicans in town in the 4 years I’ve lived here, nor any since that day.

The song ended the exact moment I pulled into my parking space…cha cha cha. Still crying, I couldn’t figure out why I was SO emotional. Yes, the song reminded me of her, but lots of things do and they don’t make me cry like this. The song wasn’t particularly meaningful to one specific time or place that I was remembering and missing, it was just a general thing she liked, one of a thousand I could name.
I could not with any certainty say that it was sadness I was feeling, nor depression, nor even the still-fresh loss of her. But it was a deep, guttural rising up from places I couldn’t identify. It consumed me.

A moment later the mindfog cleared and I had a revelation.

I realized what I’m feeling here and now in this moment is the depth of the love SHE had for ME as her child. It’s the love that other women have told me “you can’t possibly understand until you have a child of your own.” That feeling that I figured I would have to accept as truth because I would never experience it as a mother myself. But I WAS experiencing it. And I say again that it was not sadness nor a feeling of the loss of her; it was the feeling OF her that will always be within me. 

I always knew how much my mom loved me, she told me so all the time. But I couldn’t truly feel it to its full extent until she was gone forever. That’s an unfortunate truth yet one full of everlasting promise.

She used to tell me, “I love you always and forever. My baby you’ll be.” And she meant that from the bottom of her heart......cha cha cha.

Saving Time in a Picture Frame

Today was my mom’s 72^nd birthday. I once again experienced a day that was a collision of life passing by meeting things staying exactly the same.

While I was there, her aunt Vonna called to wish her happy birthday. Her aunt…in whose wedding my mom had been flower girl. Before he died a few years ago, my mom’s uncle Fritz had always called her on her birthday, and now his wife Vonna carries on the tradition. I can remember being 8 years old and Uncle Fritz calling at 6 a.m. because he knew mom worked the early shift. So of course it made sense to get that phone call today.  

Mom still gets candles on her birthday cake.

My family has enjoyed extraordinary luck in terms of long lives. No one has died unexpectedly, no one has died young. Every parent, sibling, cousin, aunt, and uncle I’ve ever had is still living. My grandparents were into their 70s and 80s when they passed, as were the great aunts and uncles I knew. This is part of the reason things seem the same year after year. 

But this year my mom seemed a little older, though most people would agree she doesn’t look her age. She’s recovering from a recent car accident and isn’t moving around as well as she’d like. I couldn’t really hug her because of her injury. She’s fragile.

We spent part of the day going through closets. She’s been trying to pare down things in her house that are taking up space. I’ve written before about how much I enjoy going through my own closets and getting rid of non-essentials. My mantra has become Keep Only What You Use. I embrace this because I have hopes and dreams of moving to a new state, of keeping my baggage light, of not being weighed down by my stuff.

But I suspect my mom has a different view of thinning out their possessions. Her resistance to my attempts at getting rid of what I saw as just a few duplicate items and outdated decorative things seemed out of proportion to my pushing. She took multiple attempts and made various excuses to stop what we were doing, to delay it until another time. 

But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them...

I believe everything she owns has a memory attached, and getting rid of anything feels like throwing away a part of her life, or her kids’ lives. I reassured her that she should not feel guilty for getting rid of something that was a gift, that we’re not keeping track. 

I have the best of intentions. I'm trying to make her life easier, to help unclutter some dark corners that might be weighing her down. I don't know where the line is between taking control and respecting a boundary, even if that boundary is purely sentimental.