She looks like sunshine.
Her hair is a golden blonde that falls at her jaw line in soft
waves
– like rolling wheat in a slight breeze.
She looks like sunshine.
Her hair is a golden blonde that falls at her jaw line in soft waves – like rolling wheat in a slight breeze.
While the years have carved their inevitable inscriptions in places around her face, her eyes continue to shine like two luminous stars on a clear night – bright and blue and sparkling.
And when my mom laughs she still sounds like a child – the guileless laugh only the pure of heart can possess.
Next week will be my mother’s, um, 29th birthday, and as usual her eldest daughter, meaning me, has nothing to give her.
Being a horticultural fanatic, I suppose I could buy her something pretty for her garden or a practical new tool to tend it with.
But showering her with flowering petals or potted branches seems almost too impersonal for a person such as my mama.
At first glance, her petite frame, swathed in what I like to call her modest “teacher clothes,” looks like the personification of sweetness and light, sugar and spice.
After more than two decades of tirelessly teaching special education students (and raising a somewhat behaviorally challenged redhead) her levels of patience and understanding rival that of a saint.
But underneath her demure demeanor lies a woman with a Herculean emotional strength that she seems to be unconscious of.
No matter what the situation, problem or crisis that I have been confronted with in my lifetime, the person I turn to for advice, support and acceptance is always her.
Like any offspring, I am an amalgamation of my parents. From my dad I received an inherently outspoken stubbornness, and in sharp contrast, my mom’s soft-spoken reticence.
Growing up, my mom lived under the thumb of her imposing father – an almost militaristic perfectionist whom you asked “how high?” when he said “jump.”
When she married her high school sweetheart (AKA Pops) and finally began her family many years later, she vowed that her children would never grow up in a household that left them feeling emotionally, verbally or spiritually hindered.
I’m sure many a time she wished we had felt the need to reign it in a little and show the much warranted veneration every parent deserves but rarely receives when their rules don’t exactly coincide with the wishes of their child.
But never once were my younger sister or I punished or chastised for speaking our minds – a right I exercised fervently anytime a situation arose that sent a bee buzzing around in my bonnet (of which, especially during the teen years, was more often than not).
Many aspects of my personality clash drastically with my mother’s. My idea of a good time involves tasty libations and dancing on bar tops, while she would rather lose herself in a good book.
I flit from one cute boy to the next despite her continuous warnings of their unscrupulous intentions.
And my neurotic need to define myself by outward appearances and materialistic acquisitions drives her crazy to the point of verbal profanity (which she only uses in times of severe frustration – another major difference between us).
But not once – despite all my faults, all the unsavory predicaments I’ve allowed myself to fall into over the years, in everything I do that she would never – has she ever judged me or made me feel undeserving of her love.
She embodies the true definition of a mother: nurturer, confidant, protector and friend.
I don’t know how many times I’ve sat with her at the kitchen table, eyes puffy and cheeks tear-streaked, listening to her cajoling insistences that whatever tragedy I was currently suffering would eventually pass because I possessed the strength to let it.
Despite my assurances to her that I was ruined forever, inevitably she was right and life went on the way it always did.
But now, looking back at all those heart-to-hearts over cups of English tea, I have come to realize that it wasn’t my strength I pulled on to get through the hard times, but hers.
My little sprite of a mother, who has given up so much of herself during her life to guarantee a better one for her daughters, is both literally and figuratively the wind beneath my wings.
No matter what I achieve or where my life takes me – whether it’s to the top of the pops or the bottom of the pile – one thing will always be certain.
I’ll always be proud to say I’m Kay’s daughter.
Happy birthday, Mom.
