My relationship with my mom is best captured in a lecture, um, letter from my daddy during my college years.
I have searched my piles of correspondence and cannot find the actual note, but it read something like this:
“Write letters. NO MORE PHONE CALLS.”
Then he detailed what he deemed an outrageous long-distance phone bill.
Oops.
I must have talked to mom a lot.
It seems she and I were often involved in low-key conspiracies against daddy.
We shopped often on Saturdays. Since I have two brothers, it was usually just mom and me.
Parisian in Five Points West (Birmingham) was one of our favorite places. We would browse and, occasionally, she would buy me a new outfit with instruction to “get the credit card bill from the post office box before your daddy sees it.”
We would hide the clothes in my closet for a couple of weeks. When I finally wore the outfit and daddy asked where it came from, I would reply (with a fledgling degree of honesty) “Oh, I’ve had this.”
Shopping secrets weren’t our only shenanigans, particularly at Parisian.
Once, my mom (and my Aunt Sue) agreed to chaperone a few of us teen-age girls as we camped outside the store overnight to purchase tickets to see the New Kids on the Block in concert. (There was a Ticketmaster outlet in the basement, near gift wrap.)
Anyone familiar with the Five Points West area of Birmingham then knows it was not really a safe place to be after dark.
Policemen patrolled the parking lot where we sat or slept on the sidewalk. One of the officers told us if there was danger, we should bang the storefront windows to activate the store alarm and alert 911.
It’s amazing the things moms will do for their daughters.
My mom did all the things for me and my brothers. She packed lunches, cooked dinners, baked birthday cakes, sewed Halloween costumes (and even some clothes for me).
She does those things for her grandkids now.
There is only one thing I can think of that my mom didn’t do when I was a kid.
She didn’t go with us to church on Sunday nights.
We would return home from service shortly after 7:00pm to find her sitting in the recliner, watching television.
The kitchen was dark, except for a light above the sink. The table and stove had been cleared of Sunday dinner. The dishes were washed. Daddy’s lunchbox was partially packed with his favorite Little Debbie snack cakes.
I learned many years later, through question or conversation, that Sunday night was the one hour a week she kept for herself.
One hour a week.
I began to understand her want for Sunday night seclusion when I became a mom. Quiet moments are hard to come by with two kids. And she had three.
When I called yesterday to ask how her Mother’s Day had been, she replied, “Too quiet.”
The years will eventually give us what we want, I guess. The trouble is, we may not want it anymore.
Another lesson learned from mom.
Mom always said God created her to be a mother and grandmother. I know that’s true because she’s the best one I know.
I hope I can love my daughters the way she has loved me.
But if mine ever make crazy requests, like camping outside for concert tickets in a sketchy part of town, I’m gonna tell them to call her.
“She watches over the activities of her household and is never idle. Her sons rise up and call her blessed.”
(Proverbs 31: 27-28)
