An Essay on My Mother

Be like the bird

that while pausing in her flight

awhile on boughs too slight

feels them give way

beneath her and yet sings

knowing that she hath wings

(victor hugo)

Like the thousands of birds that frequent my mother's garden's bird feeders, my mother is not hindered by gravity.  I'm not talking about the kind that effects women over 70 years old. . . although she is does pretty darn good in that department with fashion, nutrition and exercise.  I'm talking about the gravity of the heart.  

In the last two years my mother has taken care of and buried my Dad, moved her mother from the family farm into a nursing home, processed the monumental estate of that family farm (it took six households many months to complete), and on December 19th said good-bye to her 91 year old mother, who was her best friend and travel companion.   Oh yeah--in October my mom was diagnosed with a rare, serious, but treatable disease of the arteries in her temporal lobes.  The disease is treatable with a heavy dose of steroids for up to two years.  The steroids reek havoc on a person's body, but left untreated the disease causes sudden irreversible blindness or stroke.   

How does she respond?  She cries.  Then she orders more bulbs for the spring garden.  She surrounds herself with friends who love her.  She puts in over 1000 hours on a Habitat for Humanity House in honor of my dad.  She plans a trip to Switzerland with her grandson.  She takes a computer class at the U. She takes a class to learn to speak Czech (a hopeless endeavor. . . .).  She takes up yoga. She takes the dogs for a walk every morning that the temperature is above zero.  She feeds the birds.  

She came to visit us this weekend.  She took the kids on a "slumber party" to a local hotel with an indoor park to play at and a swimming pool.  It was the first weekend we have been together where someone wasn't sick or dying in two years.  I'm not trying to be dramatic, it's just the truth.  

She is my best girlfriend.  We got to do what girlfriends get to do sometimes--shop a little and stop for dessert.  If felt almost like normal.  We still cried, but only just a very little, and mostly upon good-bye.   We do after all, have wings.