I’m trying to think back now to my first memory of you. It’s pretty hard to do since it’s been fifty-five years, but I can recall a story you told me about my first Christmas. I was born about a month premature and as you tell it, that was a good thing, because I was a big baby. Your voice would emphasize “big” along with your hands which were always more descriptive than your voice. “An Italian trait” you’d tell us. “We talk with our hands”. Well, that first Christmas for me was a mere twelve days after I was born. You placed me under the Christmas tree in the very house where I grew up and you still live. I recall you saying, to me “you looked like baby Jesus”. Unlike today, taking a picture was much more involved in Nineteen Sixty Four and you’d have to wait days if not weeks to see them. When the pictures finally came in, there was the tree, but no baby under it. Something happened with the flash and I was not actually in the pictures – any of them. You could see the tree, but no baby under it. You told me how strange it made you feel.
My true first memory of you must be where we are both working outside. Rather you were working and I was helping you. I loved playing in the dirt with you as you gardened. On this particular day that stands out in my mind, all of us kids were supposed to go to camp. I didn’t want to and although you took me to camp, I was very relieved when you didn’t leave me there. We came back to the house and played in the garden and worked on the lawn. I remember, I didn’t leave your side all day. It was just you and I and yard work. It made me very happy.
Throughout the years, I learned so much from you. I attribute my desire to learn how to fix things to you. In fact, I still have the book you bought to learn how to fix things around the house. While I no longer need it, it just is there to remind me of where I learned my craft. My love of the outdoors can be attributed to you, even my love of the sand and ocean – comes from you. Though you didn’t enjoy swimming in the ocean, you loved hearing the wave crash on the shore and lying in the sun all day on vacation and you’d read – usually your horoscope books. I can still picture the cover and remember the author – Linda Goodman. Even fifty –five years later, you were still sending me my horoscope when you saw one that was apropos to the moment.
As I entered my teens, we butted heads more and more. Two strong willed people both up against unstoppable opposing forces. You raised a strong willed son and you weren’t quite sure how to handle that. And I. I was, I am, a strong willed son with a strong willed Mom and I didn’t know how to handle that as well. When we did battle, people hid; like two Rams crashing into each other high atop a mountain with a mighty thud that would echo through the canyon like thunder. But what people don’t know is how much respect these two Rams had for each other. We were compassionate about our convictions and neither of us knew then how to compromise.
Later on in my life, I began to resent your strength. All the fun we had had together, all the many adventures we went on, all the things you taught me, had all been pushed to the back of my mind and instead, I chose to focus on the battles, on the bad times. The resentment grew. In fact, the resentment grew deeper as time went on. I couldn’t understand why you did these things and I allowed the resentment to grow bigger than the issues causing them. We humans tend to do that, make mountains out of molehills.
Thankfully for us, I met people who began to help me understand you. Some were casual encounters that gave me a tidbit of wisdom about parents and other really help me see more clearly. They helped me understand your language and realize that like me, you were human too. Prone to making mistakes, like me, but doing the best you could with what you knew. It was only recently, as time goes, that two people helped guide me back on a path of understanding and forgiveness. One helped me understand just how much you loved me and the other taught me how to reconnect with you. I am thankful that you got to meet them though they might not have gotten to meet you.
Once I learned how much pain you were in, I was able to realize why you did what you did. I saw how I was making similar mistakes. I realized that although you were my Mom and we all expect our Mom’s to be perfect, you weren’t. I’m not. We can’t be, we’re all human and we can only be better than the generation before us. You took what you had learned made it better and passed it onto me. It was now my job to take what I learned, make it better, and pass it on.
I had spent much of my life trying to prove to you that I was OK, despite what you thought. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered, you always knew I’d be OK, but what you wanted to know was – am I happy. And rather than show you how happy I was, I tried to prove that I was OK. We spoke different languages for so long, we never even realized – we were reading different books. Once I learned this, I was able to tell you, show you – I am happy – and that moment I did that, your face lit up with joy. It made me feel so good to see you so happy that evening not long ago.
That was our last conversation Mom. I’m not sure where you are now, but if you’re looking down on me – surprise – I’m naked, but you know this is how I love to be and I know that just made you laugh. I’m glad you got to see me happy and I’m hoping it was painless and that you are free of all the pain you burdened yourself with in life. You carried that so I didn’t have to. That’s what a Mom does. I am thankful I figured this out before today and I am thankful for the gift of life you gave me. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you, both at birth and throughout life.
You once said about Lexie, “he’ll never love anyone as much as he loves that dog” I hope you now see, I do. The love I have for Lexie is equal to the love I have for you and all you did for me. I just had a harder time showing that to you than I did to her. I hope she is there to greet you and snuggle on the bed with you like you two use to do.
Your journey here is not over though, instead, it has transformed into each of us you gave life to. You will always be in my memory. Sometimes it will be in joy and other times sadness, but you will forever live within each of us and each person I touch will feel the love and life you gave me.
I Love You Mom
(photo: April 2019. The last time we were together in person. )