For my Mom, the woman I want to be when I grow up

Don’t get your blood in a bubble!

At my age, I’ll take a bubble over a clot any day. Still, my mom issued this odd-sounding warning as sage advice. As I look back over my life, I would be hard-pressed to count many situations that were genuinely worthy of blood-bubbling. Oh, at the time I believed there were, as I furiously contemplated the possible–but highly improbably–consequences of whatever set my heart pounding. Truthfully, however, when calmer minds (like hers) prevailed, these were just hurdles on the track of life. Even if you had to step over them, dragging one reluctant foot at a time, you would see how puny they were once you were on the other side. When I didn’t make cheerleader, when I had relationship problems, when my colicky babies screamed for hours, when I faced a mountainous stack of student research papers, and when I sobbed as my adult children left for new lives and homes, I repeated these words until I believed them. Don’t get your blood in a bubble, don’t get your blood in a bubble. . .

And when something or someone angered you? You could stoke the fires of your life blood until you stood over a boiling cauldron of outrage. Or you take Marcia Welch’s wisdom to heart: you could turn down the heat until a lukewarm reason took over, blessedly tempering all you’d planned to say and do. Although I know my mom got angry, I never saw her fly into an outrage. Her blood percolated at a steady room temperature and refused to bubble.

Own it!

I remember the day I came home from college to find my kindergarten brother heading out the door for school. But wait! I said to my mom. He still has his Spock ears on–you’re not really going to let him wear those to school, are you? My mom smiled and shrugged. I persisted. Really? They’re green cardboard ears attached with rubber bands! But I momentarily forgot who this woman was. This was the woman who wore an infamous pair of homemade earrings to a faculty wives’ gathering. As a gift, my sister had attached a string of paper clips to two rubber bands to create a stylish pair of dangly earrings. As my mom looped each rubber band over her ear and stood back to admire herself in the bathroom mirror, she proudly owned the look. Just as my brother did as he zipped his jacket, adjusted his ears, and stepped out to face the day with his best Spock face.

When my younger sister wanted a floor length-purple cape instead of a coat, my mom made her one. I can only imagine the feat it was for my sister to stuff yards and yards of purple fabric into her school cubby at Park Elementary School, but such is the price of style! With confidence, she owned the look, for she had learned from the master. As did I. I still recall the day when, on a Target run, my toddler son reached into the cart, grabbed a bedazzled headband I’d picked up for his sister, and wore it atop his afro with unabashed pride as we tooled through the aisles. I remember thinking, you come from a long line of homemade earrings, Spock ears, and cape wearers. Own it, buddy!

This, too, shall pass

Although my sisters and I desperately wanted a horse, we never got one. Living in a residential area with a small yard ruled this out. Still, over the years, we had a steady stream of smaller pets–many reptilian and amphibian, and some from the rodent family. At the end of the school year when we brought home three-legged salamanders from my granddad’s biology classroom (they were the victims of regeneration experiments), my mom removed her collection of milk glass from the dining room shelf to make room for our terrarium. Later, when we added a lizard and attempted to add a garter snake (it escaped when my sister tripped in the back yard, and the lid of the cardboard box flew into the bushes), I’m sure that my mom sighed and thought this, too, shall pass.

Seasons of amphibians and reptiles did pass and gave way to new seasons of hamsters and gerbils, sun fish, and tadpoles. Actually one summer day, after a few hours of diligent hunting at the park, we brought home a pickle jar of what we believed were tadpoles. When my dad announced that they were not tadpoles but leeches, my mom declared that the season for swimming things had passed., and back to the park they went. Following my mom’s lead, I’ve created terrariums for the snails my grandchildren and I have collected from the yard, brought home a gerbil and two parakeets, raised five rabbits and a slug of kittens, and helped to rescue at least a hundred minnows as they were being washed from our pond and sent to their deaths in my daughter’s yard. Seasons of snails, gerbils, rabbits, and minnows may pass, but the summer is young. (And just yesterday at the pond, I spotted a handsome looking bullfrog just begging to be someone’s forever amphibian!)

Home is where the heart is

I love my home which is situated a mere stone’s throw from my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren’s home. In the winter when the trees have shed their leaves, I can stand at my bedroom window and see the silhouettes of Gracyn and Griffin as they stand by their sliding glass door, look out, and wave across the large ditch which separates our houses.

Still, much of my heart resides at 611 West 27th Street in Kearney, Nebraska. It remains seated there around the large oval dining room table, flanked by my sisters and brother, my mom and dad. Here, it celebrated birthdays, graduations, and holidays. Here, it learned the art of listening and loving. After years of living in other homes, here, it continues to find refuge in the special place my mother has made for us.

When I recently discovered that the renowned poet, Mary Oliver, stayed at our family home years ago when she was visiting and reading at the University of Nebraska Kearney, that she slept in the very bed that I sleep in when I visit my mom, I was momentarily aghast. Mary Oliver, the Mary Oliver, in our home? But then I considered the decades of visitors whom my mom has welcomed. She may not have originated the saying mi casa es tu casa, but she gives it true meaning.

My son attended college at UNK for two years and used our house on West 27th Street as home base. When my mom would ask him how many of his football player friends would be coming over for dinner, and he would say I think 6–or maybe 8, she would simply respond with I’ll make cake AND pie. And when the group was sated, and many ended up sleeping on the floor in front of our family television, it seemed all too natural. This was home. This is home. For any and all of us.

Over my lifetime, I’ve had so many opportunities to learn from books and experts in all sorts of things. The truest, the most valuable lessons, however, continue to be those I’ve learned from my mom. So Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. You really are the woman I want to be when I grow up.

Love, Shannon