Mom

She held the record cover in front of me and slid out the shiny black perfectly lined disc.
"I think you'll like this," she said smiling down at me, blue eyes asparkle.
The record player was a thing like I'd never before seen, all plastic and knobs, it smacked of the future. She patiently showed me how to drop the needle onto the groove and when the "pop sizzle" came out of the speaker she smiled again and looked to my reaction. Strange rhythmic claps and strums bounced off the hardwood floors and emanated in the sunlit room. It was confusing to me. She pat the back of my head.

"Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkle was my first favorite song.
Here is the song on Youtube
The whole album is still a treasure to me.

We picked blackberries. I remember her unexpectedly pulling the Honda Accord over to the shoulder of the road near the golf course where a big beautiful row of fat dark purple blackberries hung on thick green bending stalks. We put them in large clean white buckets that just happened to be in the back seat.
The blackberry pie was delicious and foraging for food is cool.
Here is her recipe.

She read to me. The first book I remember was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.Though very young I still recall the sound of her voice with my head on the pillow imagining a magical world just through the winter coats hanging in the wardrobe. I still read fantasy.

One of my teachers at Ridgecrest Elementary taught me that May Day is a day to give flowers. I was very excited by this as I knew where a bunch of pretty flowers were growing next to my house. So I cut them, bundled them up and gave them to Mom with a big smile on my face. She looked down at my arrangement of daises, dandelions and daffodils and concluded something was wrong. Mom made me knock, apologize and return the daffodils to the elderly woman who lived next door. It was a terrifying thing to do. I knew this woman didn't like me. She had given me a very severe finger shake when she caught Billy and I peeing in her back yard. That finger shake held some weight in my mind. My mother insisted.

From her I learned that a woman could be heroic and strong.

Near our camp grounds on the river was a massive log jam that adults deemed safe to fish from or walk upon if you so wished...just ..you know be careful! It was the 1970's. I took a few tentative steps out there but didn't really care for the rushing dark cold water beneath my feet whilst standing on slick soggy logs. My mom though, was right out there in the middle of it. Suddenly, one of our labs, Mindy, got swept up and was floundering in the rapids upstream, struggling to keep her head up as the current pushed her further into the water heading directly toward the massive log jam where my mother stood. I was shocked and horrified as Mindy slipped under the logs and disappeared.  I remember Mom near the middle of the log jam squatting down, plunging her arm into a hole of dark water with her other arm extended for balance. Her body jerked and I witnessed her miraculously curl a wet black shaking dog out of the abyss: one handed.  This really happened. I saw it.

She made me this cake for my 6th birthday.

She taught me to cook, do my laundry, make my bed and iron. The ironing didn't stick but the rest did.

Upon finding that I had scrawled something mean and belittling next to a classmates name in my junior high yearbook she looked at me a little confused and then upset. She made me scratch it out and told me it wasn't funny. She was right.



My Mom has decorated many gorgeous Christmas trees but to me it is she that makes Christmas beautiful.

It's safe to say that my mother taught me kindness and that is a nice thing to know...literally. If there are finer qualities in me today it is because my mother shaped me by encouraging polite behavior and showed me with her own interactions with others. I'm sure I didn't learn every lesson but I wouldn't be the man I am today without her guidance.

Thank you Mom.  I love you.