Packing and Keeping the Nervous Stomach at Bay

I think I inherited a touch of anxiety from my mother, much as I hate to admit it.
I have spent most of my adult life trying to be different from my mother. I felt sometimes that, because I was her oldest child and daughter, that she expected me to be like her in most ways. I, on the other hand, wanted to be myself, and that meant to be the polar opposite to her.
She was shy and hesitant around new people; I tried to be bold and confident. She put herself down because she didn't go to college; I flaunted my education like a new hairdo. She liked to stop during the day and take a nap; I was always working and doing. I would come home from my job as a teacher and immediately jump into cleaning the kitchen, cooking, or maybe going out for a run.
But a daughter is a daughter. I am shy in many situations, until I feel comfortable enough to be bold. I compare myself to other people, and too often wonder why I as not as good as -- a best-selling author, a charismatic speaker, or a serene acupuncturist. Why am I not as sure of myself, as myself, as those people are? Never mind that I have no idea how they might feel about themselves.
My mother also suffered from anxiety during much of her life. She had difficulty making changes in her life; she worried about her children to the extent of retro-active worrying. In other words, if she found out one of us had done something that might have put us at some small risk, she commented later, "If I had known you were doing that, I would have worried."
Although in later years she loved to travel, there was a time when she only traveled because my dad wanted to take trips after they retired.
I love to travel. I love everything about it. I love the sights, sounds and smells of places that are different. I love foreign languages; I love trying new food.
But I get butterflies in my stomach preparing for a trip, and I have put a lot of time and effort learning to visualize peace and calm in every situation.
I am my mother's child as well as myself. And isn't that the point of raising children? We want them to be the best of ourselves as well as their own best.
I have the opportunity to learn and grow, and isn't that what it is all about?

Feeling Desperate

"All men live lives of quiet desperation." Henry David Thoreau

I don't know if that is true or not for all men, and women, but I think most of us have our desperate moments. I first read that quote many years ago when I was dealing with a family tragedy. And I think those times of difficulty are when we encounter desperation.

My mother has been gone for three weeks now. Most of the time I feel positive, reasonably happy, and am getting on with my life. But the moments come, especially late in the day, when I feel unbearable sadness, and then the questions come. Was I a good enough daughter? Could I have been more patient? Did I give enough? I want to move on and be happy, but at the same time, moving on takes me away from Mom.

Or does it?

I will always to connected to my mother and my father, who died almost ten years ago. They were loving, beautiful parents, who loved each other very much. I know in my heart that they are happy to be together again now in the next world.
I also know that I will get through this. I am their child. I have their strength and faith.

My Mother the Editor

My mom should have been an editor or an English teacher. She was acutely aware of the correctness of language, and loved to point out grammatical and usage errors in newspaper articles and in the speech of TV personalities.
This was great when I was a child in school. I never worried about errors in my English assignments if she had checked my homework. But as I grew older and began to take my writing more seriously, it began to be a problem.
If I gave my mom an early draft of a short story, instead of giving me feedback on the sense of the story, the characters, the way the story flowed, I more often received comments such as, "Don't you think a semi-colon would be better here instead of a comma?"
After receiving several comments like this I would finally ask her, "But did you like it?" And she would answer, "Oh, yes. I loved it."
It was just one of the many ways that my mom and I approached life from different perspectives, although we both wanted to reach the same goal.
Mom looked at the surface, at what was visible, and made sure that what was apparent to the outside world was correct and acceptable. Once that was done, she could go about her own private business of working on the inner life, which would likely as not have fallen into place by way of her loving hand.
I use a messier technique. The manuscript I am currently working on is in two gigantic chunks that somehow have to be melded together into one story. I wrote it in bits and pieces, some as short as a sentence or two. I need to get the continuity in shape before I worry about commas. As in life, I tend to make a mess of things trying to get it right, and figure out later how I will present myself to the world.
Somehow, each of these approaches worked for each of us, but not without some conflict between us along the way.
But maybe that is something my mom, and all moms, do for their children. She helped me tidy up my messes.

Three Weeks

Photo of my mom with her great-grandson last spring.

It's been three weeks now, and I miss my mom terribly. I keep thinking of things that I want to tell her. "I had lunch with Linda yesterday." "I saw the movie about Julia Child."
When I was growing up in Illinois, I always got off the school bus bursting with stories of the day that I had to tell Mom right away. As the oldest of four, I had stiff competition for Mom's attention, especially at the end of the school day. Mom often told me, "Wait until the younger ones get their talking done, then I can listen to you."
But I couldn't wait. I had to tell Mom NOW! I had to talk -- to tell her what was important to me, because that was who I was and who I was becoming as a person.
We spent so much time together the last few months of her life, but in many ways that makes it even more difficult. For the first time in our lives, we would live just fifteen minutes away from each other. But as a good friend once said, "We had plans, but God had other plans."

Storms and Sunny Days

I love summer storms -- the darkness of the sky, the rain, the water rushing in the stream behind my house. I love the lushness of the landscape after a good rain. When I lived in Costa Rica, I loved the rainy season best. In the tropics, the sun shines in the morning, and everyone goes out early to finish their shopping and work before the afternoon rain. Construction workers are at their sites by 6 a.m. Students are at school by 7.
The rain begins sometime in the afternoon. It could be one o'clock or four o'clock; it could be a downpour or a light drizzle, but the rain will come, wash everything clean, and make the world rich with life.
What we call storms in life are not the same. Life storms do change us, wash us clean and make us new. But they are not without their pain. We cannot take a nap and allow the storms in life to wash over us.
My mother became ill while visiting me in April, and passed to the next life on July 21. She improved amazingly after the orginial crisis that put her in the hospital for 2 1/2 weeks, and a rehabilitation center for another 3 weeks. She made the decision to move into a senior living facility not far from my home, and lived there for only a month.
We had returned to her home of more than thirty years in Illinois, to begin sorting out the possessions of the years, and to retrieve her two cats and bring them with us to her new home.
The end came quickly early one morning. My California brother had just left, and I was waiting for the Alaska brother with his two daughters to arrive to help with cleaning the house. When Mom called to me that she could not breathe, and gasped that she needed to go to the hospital, the paramedics arrived in just seven minutes. They did what they were trained to do, but she was gone.
I spent the fist few hours, as I waited for my brother to arrive, cleaning my mom's house.