Mothers I Have Known

I am imitating my friend Tiffani's blog and writing about Mothers this month. I was so inspired by her own writing, I decided to do my own. I want to talk about the various mothers I have known throughout the years, because I believe there is nobody more important than one's mother. Here is my list of mothers, and please excuse my lack of paragraphs. My computer is having a breakdown right now... Joyce: this is my own mom. Everyone who knows her loves her. She has "adopted" more kids than I can count. It was not uncommon in our household to have my own friends or my siblings' friends call her "Mom," also. She loved all of us, whether we were her's or not. This is a woman who has her nursing degree and who gave up nursing to be with her children when we were small. We were more important to her. She opened up a daycare practice so that she could be home with us and so that we did not have to go to Day Care ourselves. She gave up her career for us. I adore her for that. She scrimped and saved to help send us to a private Christian school because she wanted us to have a solid Christian education. She was the kind of mother who surrounded my brother and sister and I with books. We were read to from our infancy onward. Even when money was very, very tight, there was always book money. My sister and I belonged to the Weekly Reader's Club, which we loved so much we saved our books and passed them on to other children when we were grown (some of them I still have because I could not bear to part with them!) Even as a child I was allowed to check out adult-level books from the library, as long as they were educational. Because of my mom's encouragement to read, read, read, my brother and sister and I are all hopelessly in love with books. We hoard them. We cherish them. When my sister built a nifty set of bookcases in her basement on Sunrise Lane, it was a cause for family celebration. When Matthew stayed up all night reading a book for the first time when he was six years old, my sister called me and cried. That is all my mother's influence. My mom sang to us constantly when we were children. She sang to the daycare kids, too. She sang to us songs about Jesus. She sang to us about poor, tragic Clementine and her untimely drowning in 1849. Whenever we tripped and fell she'd sing "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again!" As very small children, she would open up the hymnbook and we children would compete to see who got to sing a song (and yes, siblings, that is a real memory!!) When we passed a construction site, she'd sing "You'll never get rich by digging a ditch!" She played music for us constantly as children. She still plays music constantly. We went through phases. We went through the 8-tract-tape phase of the 70's (mercifully short!) We went through the Life Action Singers phase, also of the 70's (and even though we chuckle now at their long dresses and long, straight hair parted in the middle, I did learn a lot of hymns from those records.) During 1976, the bicentennial year, we played a lot of Sousa. My dad loved music, too. He still does. I do have to mention him briefly, because he gave me a big pile of Russian, Ukrainian and Polish records when I was young that I cherish deeply to this very day!! And even though my mom really doesn't care that much for opera or classical music, she did play it for us, especially Hooked on Classics, which, as 1970's as that was, taught me excerpts from just about every classical piece ever written. It was my first introduction to classical music as a child. She insisted I take piano lessons, and even though it took me eight years of lessons to figure out I'll never be wildly talented, I do enjoy music and I developed quite a love for classical music through my piano lessons. Also, my learning classical piano led to my learning all about opera, which I adore to this day. Again, all due to my mother. My mom was the kind of mom who sought out her kids' talents and encouraged them in those talents. My brother was always a gifted artist, and my mom made sure he had all the art supplies he needed. When he entered the film phase of his artistic talents, she was very enthusiastic and gung-ho and cheered him on in everything he did (and still does!) My sister turned out to be quite an accomplished flutist as a child, and my mom drove her to endless lessons, searched for the best teachers for her, and again, cheered her on. I think my mother was rather baffled by me. After all, who else could say that their ten-year-old daughter had pictures of Eva Peron on her wall! She always encouraged me, though, no matter how quirky my interests were. When I announced one day in the later 1990's that I intended to go to Ukraine for an entire month, she bravely smiled and said "Great, honey! That'll be great!" Later, years later, she told me that she cried after I got on the plane. I think she cried that entire month! When I announced, once again, to her that I was going to be smuggling Bibles into China, she smiled an even broader smile and said, "Wonderful!" She never told me, but I bet you she cried when I got on that plane, too. The only time she ever forbade me to go anywhere was when I told her of my longing to go to Cambodia. She refused to smile at the thought of me going to that country. She simply said, "Please wait until I'm gone to go there!" She's trooped with me all through Manhattan and we have very proudly determined that we have mastered the subway system, with the help of my nifty little laminated map. I could go on and on about my mother. She's the most wonderful person I know, and she's my best friend. I love her dearly. I'll write more about her later: about how she's a cancer survivor, about how she runs an award-winning dog therapy group, about how selfless she is and how loving she is. I'll write about her incredible faith and her inspiring life. All of that will come later. I hope you enjoyed reading about my mom, because she really is a very special lady.