Being There

I have an amazing mother. After my parents divorced, my mother raised three boys on her own. These weren’t regular kids. I used to break every glass bottle I came across, Nathan taught me everything I knew about acting like a Tasmanian devil, and Stan grew very angry trying to keep up with his younger brothers. My mom used to work three jobs in a day, bake cakes for extra cash, and still somehow had some time for us kids.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my mother recently. Being the baby boy, my mother and I had the closest friendship out of us boys. Mom and I would have long conversations about everything. She taught me how to make objects out of clouds. I would sit in the front seat of the van and shout, “I see a horse! Look it’s a pirate ship! That one is a dragon breathing fire on the horse and pirate ship!” My mom always saw whatever I said was in the clouds. When Nathan and I found an artistic stroke with oil paints, mom bought us every color paint there was, and we pieced together a set of paintbrushes.

Looking back now, on those years growing up, I am surprised at all the memories I have of my single mother “being there”. I remember going to all of Nathan’s basketball games. I remember going out of town, traveling to Sea World, I remember her teaching me to cook. She was there more than most single parents are, and I have no clue how she did it. I remember the bags under her eyes after she came home late from a 15-hour day at her jobs, but I remember the pancakes on Saturday morning. I remember her short fuse at points, but I also remember the hug the next morning when I woke up. My brothers and I agree. Our mom gave us the best possible childhood she could. We had a backyard with a trampoline, a basketball hoop, we always had cable TV, we had a Nintendo the year in came out, and we have great memories of her “being there”.

The years have been hard for our family. After all the long hard years of her raising her boys, she finds out she had Multiple Sclerosis in the mid- 90’s. MS has put her in a wheelchair, and forced her to learn to write with her left hand. Physically my mom is a shell of the women that took me to my first professional basketball game. But, her heart is as big as it has ever been. My mom has watched all three of her boys grow and marry. She has three grandkids and a divorcee baby boy. She struggles with her physical body. There is anger under the surface when she can’t physically do what she once could. There is hurt when she can’t “be there” for her boys or for their kids.
My mother is so beautiful. The years have robbed her of walking, but the Lord has given her strength to live when most would have given up. I love my mom more than I realize. I have her nose, I have her thick hair, and her pail skin. But more than anything, I have her love no matter how much I screw up. I will never forget the phone call when I told her that I was getting divorced. The mom inside her started to cry and was at a loss for words. The women that went through the fire of a divorce got angry and tried to “get me through it”. But the mother in her won that fight, and we cried together. I could feel her love on the back of my head (it felt like one of her hugs, when she reaches up from her chair and pulls me close with her hand on my head). I love my mom. I love her for “being there”.