TO MY MOTHER

A little over 34 years ago, we met for the first time. After a dramatic race to the hospital (that included a speeding ticket) they pulled me from your womb via emergency C-section. You took one look at my beautiful face and vomited. Nice mom :)

My earliest memories of you often involve you singing...ballads from the radio, Scottish folk songs, primary songs. I especially remember you singing by our beds in the evening. I loved those songs, I still do. I have many memories of your softness, your tender emotions when ever you spoke of the home you left in Scotland or of your love for our Father in Heaven. I remember even as a child, being aware that there was always some degree of longing for what you had sacrificed to come to America and become the woman who would be our mother. I loved how your Scottish accent would thicken right up when you sang the songs of your childhood. We have a history of butting heads a little bit. Coming from a culture and a time when children were "seen and not heard" I'm sure it was a shock to you how much of a challenge I was, but you were determined that I be given the voice you never had as a little girl. You allowed me freedom to think, to question, to explore and develop into the person I was meant to be.

As a child, you had dreamed that you would grow up and have a daughter who would be a figure skater. When I was little, you signed Aaron and I up for ice skating lessons. You later said that you took one look at me on the ice and let that dream go! I never had the sense that you had any vision for my life outside of me being who I was meant to be. That acceptance was what allowed me to dream my own dreams and to fallow them.

Thank goodness we made it through the teenage years...those years when pulling away from your parents is just part of the natural process of things. All the things that drove me crazy about you in those years are the things that amaze me about you now. I used to hate how you never met a stranger and would talk to anyone and everyone as if they were friends. Now I am filled with wonderment at this woman who came to the world with a gift for loving people, just because they are people, a woman who by her very nature is drawn to seek out people in need and to love them. What lucky children we were to have such a tangible example of Christlike charity in our home.

I love being a mother. I am so, so grateful for all the many things you did so very right and for your determination to forge the way for a different kind of mothering than you had ever seen. I am grateful for you place in my life today as a sounding board, confidant, counselor and cheering section. I count on our daily chats for so many reasons. I don't know how I would have made it through the challenges of my own mothering experiences with out you rooting so faithfully for my success.

Having recently welcomed a daughter into this world, I can easily imagine what must have gone through your head in the days after I was born. You must have wondered who I would grow up to be. I am certain that you felt a degree of both excitement and concern for the journey ahead that a woman can only feel for her daughter...she knows all to well the journey to womanhood.

Thank you, Mom, for being my Mother on that wonderful and rocky journey. You mean more to me than I have shown or found ways to express. I love you. Happy Mother's Day.

Rebecca