Happy Mother’s Day Mom!
All things considered in the parent lottery – I was pretty lucky. I have two great parents. As a man it is easy to identify with your father – at my age you have gone through much of the same wringer. It becomes easy to see the similarities and qualities your father instilled/beat into you. When it comes to your mother you have pause and reach down inside yourself to that gooey center where swirls your feelings and muck out a handful and give it a good hard look. That core part of you is as essential to your being as your heart is to your living body. When I look there I find my mother’s fingerprints all over it. Oddly enough I think a lot of men deny that part of them exists. So what do I find there that my mother helped mold?
Desire to Create
I am not labeling this “creativity” to me creativity has a lot to do with the solving of problems – everyone can be creative if they care/have to be. I am talking about the desire, maddening at times when I was younger, to lay my hands on “something” and make “something” out of it. That compulsion to make most definitely comes from my mother. It is what makes every skill I have ever learned or developed worth the effort. I am at my happiest, I have realized, when I have done/made something then look at that something and come to the conclusion – this is good. My father taught me skills and to stop and look and enjoy what I do but from my mother comes the desire/need.
Wanderlust
In that wad of my inner self is another need – a need to see and experience as much as I can. The need to look at and pay attention to small things as well as large – just like Mom. The ability to make an adventure out of a walk in my neighborhood. Trying to imagine all the threads of life stories of the people around me as I sit in a traffic jam and how that makes such an inconvenience not so bad. How the wide blue sky filled with clouds can make me just stop and stare. Knowing God made all of this and that he must love us quite a lot because so much of nature seems so much more than just what we need to exist. That knowing is not enough – I need to touch, taste, breath, feel to believe I really know anything.
A Soft Heart
That… is hard thing to admit but to deny it would be to lie to myself. I am soft hearted. I would rather trust and be let down than not trust people. I can not hold on to hurts too long. I can’t not feel for other people no matter how awful they have been. I have no problem telling those I love that I love them. Every small child I see is a precious bundle of limitless potential – I can not help but smile at them. Hard to admit because I am a man and I have suffered for it but it is there in me because of Mom and all in all it is a good thing.
Love
Mom showed me love and taught me about love. She taught me that people express love in so many different ways – by words, touch, deeds – long before anyone wrote a book on the topic. She taught me about the love of God. Down in the middle of me is a brilliant gem of love that has existed since I was born and was put there by my mom – I have always felt loved even in the darkest times.
Well that is way more introspection and gooshy stuff than I am usually down for but… probably will make a good Mother’s Day present. Am pretty sure Mom looks at me at times and wonders if anything sank in, what part of her is part of me. I know I now look at my kids and wonder the same. Well know this – lots and lots sank in Mom.
Have a great Mother’s Day!