I miss buying my mom things that I knew that she would like or things that she needed. I miss making her laugh. I miss just knowing that she was there. I miss how she knew everybody’s birthday!! She would know great, great nieces and nephews birthdays or would remember relatives from long ago. As she got older and grew more ill, she would still say out of no where, “Today is somebody’s birthday”. She would sit and think a little harder and sometimes it would eventually come to her. I miss acting silly and scooching up to her to give her “kitty nuzzles”. Don’t get wrong, we had our moments and certainly our arguments like most mothers and daughters, but at the end of the day we would always make up. There are the people who will have something to say about the relationship that I had with my mother, but those are the same people that never or hardly bothered with her at all. The relationship that I had with my mom was multifaceted and complicated at times, but love was always there, I always answered her calls, and she never wanted for anything that I could afford to get her.
I spoke at my mother’s funeral and I was accused of white-washing her which simply isn’t true. Mom never gave the airs that she was perfect and she would say in certain conversations, ” I ain’t been perfect, but I tried”. She was always open about decisions that she had made and even though those were her decisions she would talk to me about how to make other decisions and considering other options in my own life. I would often talk to my mom about certain problems that I was having and what I wanted to do, but she always would tell me that regardless of what others showed me or regardless of what they did to me, “that I needed to show people how to be”. I shared those words at her funeral, again people took that as my mom putting herself on a pedestal or that I was trying to put my mom on a pedestal and that simply was not the case. ” I don’t know how she could say to show people how to be cuz she aint been all that”. Oh yes…..the vapors of crap will always circulate back around – in other words – I heard about what you said! People often threw things up in my mom’s face or would talk out of the side of their mouth to her about things and instead of her going off on them, she would show these people kindness and love. I remember asking my mom one time if she knew that a certain person was trying to be “smart” about something they had said. She did not move a muscle, only her eyes shifted directly at me and she said, “I knew what they were saying, those are people living in glass houses and they forget that I knew them when, they don’t know that I could remind them”. Or sometimes, she would say, “they can’t help it”. I never…you hear me, I never understood that and not only did I not understand it, but it really made me mad. In those instances my mom would tell me, ” Sometimes you have to show people how to be”. When people were rude to her and cut her off for not attending her sister’s funeral, my mother forgave them instantly and told me that it was okay. Her capacity to forgive was tremendous. I have preached in front of thousands and at one point in time I held the title of an evangelist, but I could never grasp my mother’s capacity to forgive. It was amazing. In hindsight, I think that Momma’s capacity to forgive was a reflection of how she would have like to have been forgiven. Instead of telling folks about themselves, I think she modeled how she would have liked to have been treated along her paths. Even though she never received that for herself, she never wavered from forgiving and having a great deal of care in her heart for others even to those who showed no care for her at all. I don’t know if I will ever have a heart like that, I can still only marvel at hers.
Today is my Momma’s birthday. I don’t talk to much about her and this is the first time that I have written about her since she passed on, but I think about her everyday. My mom wasn’t famous, she wasn’t perfect, she did not have any fancy titles, but she did have a purpose…..she was born to be a mother. She was a good mother and she never stopped mothering clear up to her last days, she was still counting her ducks (children) and making sure that her kids were okay, that her family was okay.
Happy Birthday Momma – I love you, I miss you. I hope you are pleased with what you see of me now, I am sure there are days that you shake your head, but just know that I am trying……