Marvel Mom
In the twinkle of a town where I grew up, we had one stoplight but two grocery stores. Bi-weekly, my mom would make a list—in her impeccably petite, heavily right-slanted handwriting—of essentials needed for feeding my brother and me and taking care of the home we shared. She would pull the circulars from the Healdton Herald for Stones IGA and David’s Foods, dividing the list into what-to-get-from-where, based on the purchase price. She squeezed the juice out of every quarter, nickel and dime... didn’t then, and doesn’t now, have faith in or partake in waste.
She could also fix most anything—my mom. The washer when it clunked, the outdoor faucet when it leaked, the push mower when it wouldn’t start, which seemed like every other week. When the well-worn beast refused to respond to a pull, she’d lay the yellow chassis on its side, loosen a cap or two, make good use of both ends of a screwdriver, then flip it back upright on four wheels and yank the starter rope. Once the engine began to growl, she’d move over and leave the downhill-uphill pushing to my brother and me, though she could mow the whole two acres, too, and sometimes did.
An unannounced do-it-yourselfer, mom did her own nails, her own hair, her own taxes and whatever my summer softball team needed her to do. She made all my games, rubbed my legs after all-day track meets, sat through my concerts and school plays. She even put chains on the car tires when it was icy to make her thirty-two mile commute to work. Showing up, no matter the circumstances, was an unwritten rule in our house. As was taking care of the things you can. We didn’t need a neon sign that said it, we watched mom do it every day.
A cross between a finger-wagger and a hype-woman, my mom, oddly, is neither, yet she houses chromosomes of both. Growing up, my brother and I were clearly aware of the do-thises-and-the-don’t-do-thats, but I don’t recall either ever really being talked about. We weren’t required to make our beds (sorry, Admiral McRaven) or clean our plates or do a certain set of weekly chores. Discipline came from consistently doing stuff that mattered—a set of things we were given the freedom to figure out how to define for ourselves. She didn’t pay us for making As. She didn’t give me pep talks before big games or run play-by-plays of my performances (lousy or splendid) on car rides home. We didn’t talk about any of it. She just said “Good job” when we did what we were supposed to and then we got on with things.
I never saw my mom—ever—buy anything for herself. I never knew it, if she went to a movie. The only traveling she’s ever done was with me and our team, and the only reason she did that was because she knew I wanted to take my kids, and my husband and I would benefit from her help. She is the primary caretaker of her husband of forty-four years who’s been living with multiple sclerosis for almost four decades.
She stands constantly on call. To sit, to survey, to solve, to serve.
These past few years, especially, she’s drawn the stubby straw. With such a stroke of not-luck comes a coupon good for ranting and raving at God, though she has chosen not to clip it. She’s taken, instead, the way-way-less-traveled route. Grateful for absorbing the tiniest things—a blown kiss from her great-granddaughters, an out-of-nowhere cool front, a batch of deviled eggs, another Thunder win—her cup is never empty, if she even has one. And I don’t think she does. A device for holding and assessing is not a thing she would see a need for. If you ask her, she will tell you she is richly blessed, without measure.
It’s a beautiful thing to not need very much.
We don’t have a lot in common, my mom and me. Before it turned to silver, her thin, bone-straight hair was black. Mine is thick and curly, almost blonde. She has brown eyes, high Native American cheekbones, eighty-year-old skin that’s mostly void of wrinkles. My eyes are cornflower blue, I need to suck in my cheeks to find the bones of my face, and my slightly-over-middle-age skin is creased and mottled from a life of sun and sweat. My mom has never played sports (mostly due to lack of opportunity), I’ve spent my life on courts. She loves numbers, I covet words. She knows exactly what’s inside every drawer and cabinet in her house, I can never find my keys.
The two of us are wound with different wire.
The grandest compliment I could ever hope to receive is, “You are so much like your mom.”
P.S. Our Favorite Moms