Mom I Miss You ( and here is why)

Specific things I miss the most about my Mom. Things to remember when I am home sick and homesick.
1. Getting tucked into bed. Mom really did pull the covers tight and tuck them in on the sides. I was the flat girl pancake pressed between scratchy wool US Navy blankets and cool sun dried sheets. 
2. Getting treated special when I was sick. Welch's Concord Grape Juice, tea in the tea pot, Jack and Jill Magazine, new paper dolls and scissors,  and  Waverly Crackers, all hand carried on a tray up the pine stairs to my room.

Scituate Light House my brother Chip

3. Driving us home from the beach "the long way" .  Sandy, sticky and hot from the beach. All the windows rolled down.  Cruising at twenty miles an hour past all the "ritzy houses" on First Cliff. Passing the Coast Guard Station and driving to the end of the road for a special view of Scituate Light House.  Then stopping for an ice cream cone in Scituate Harbor. 
4. Getting the sand rinsed off after a day at the beach.  Mama would have the old blue enamel wash basin out on the grass in the back yard ready and waiting with water warmed from the sun. Me small enough to fit into it and Mama washing "all the sand away from the nooks and crannies."
5. Learning all the things she taught me.  How to wash dishes. The magic of A.A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner,  sewing clothes for my doll. Teaching me to knit from The Mary Francis Knitting Book.  How to feel the breeze on my skin and think it is really truly  Heaven.

Our Kitchen in Scituate

Summer's arrival

6. Love and joy for every living creature. Especially her love of her grand children and great joy with each additional one. 


7.  Lying with her on her bed in the dark when I was a teenager.  That was when and where we could talk and talk about anything.  Books, our art projects, boys, faith, heartbreaks, and what is important. "Always Love and Always Keep the Door Open." 

Birthdays

8. Celebrations are important.  Birthdays, Christmas, Easter,  Thanksgiving. Share them with the ones you love. 
Keep traditions alive. She made me the same birthday cake every year. Chocolate devils food with Mocha icing. 

We still have her Christmas Stocking

Mom's Christmas stocking is hanging the middle here and I still have it. It was made for her in 1912. Gifts and presents came from her heart and her thrifty pocket book.  I remember the year we all got beaded Indian hair clips, and belt buckles that she had inherited from her brother David.  Now I find myself re-gifting family treasures and woe to the teenagers that might receive them. Someday they will remember and do the same.

9. Playing with my Mom's treasures. My favorite was her button tin. A black canister that was  hand gold leafed by her. It was filled to the brim with vintage buttons. My treasures where her treasures. How I would love to have that tin back and sit on the floor once more sifting button after button through my fingers. Watching them spill out into a magic kaleidoscope of colors. Mama saying "oh I remember where that one came from" and it would be off some ancient wardrobe article from the 20's or 30's.  The black jet buttons where our favorites. They were older than time and had been on some Great Grandparent's clothing.  Daddy even had buttons in the tin that he made from Walrus tusk and petrified wood. He carved them during the freezing dark nights that he spent guarding our country on duty in the Aleutian Islands in WWII. 

Mom's teapot and tea tray that she carried upstairs to my bedroom when I was sick.

If I could open that black tin once more my Mama would be in my hands.

10. My mother's voice. The things she said. The things she repeated over and over.  The story's she told me. When I was having a bad dream... She said, "I'm here, just close your eyes and go to sleepy."  When I had a fever.... She took a cool wash cloth and wiped my face and said,  " There they go I am washing away all the bads and replacing them with only goods."  

her 90th  birthday

She said, "Don't wear your heart on your sleeve."  and " Penny for your thoughts". ( I never had any to share when she said this.) I would share them now.  She called me "Lamby".   She said, "Freckles (my brother Ross's prize Ewe) was the best sheep ever."  She showed me grass has more than one color and told me how to paint it.  She said, " Don't cry over spilt milk."  We had lots of spilled milk over the years. She said, "Life is for the living".  She said, "you will have lots of beaus." She said, " Waste not want not." and she saved slivers of soap, scraps of tin foil, plastic wrap, paper bags, scrap paper. I have pencil nubs of hers that must be 80 years old and still enough lead in them to be useful.  She showed me how to use them all over and over to their end.  When she was 93 and in the early stages of Azheimer's she said, " Look at my acorns" and showed me her little enamel earings that I had made for her when I was ten. She was wearing them proudly and had screwed them onto her earlobes just for me. One last time.

 She never said it, but she showed me where God lives in all things. 

Mama Days End Breeze

I miss you Mama. Love Lamby

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