Love l e t t e r s

Writing a love letter today to my first great love...

My mother.

I loved her first.

If I could, I'd like to see her for even just five, small, brief, priceless minutes each and every day for the rest of my life.  

My mother was never and is not perfect. 

This is of course the very reason she is a perfect parent.

How else can you teach your children to survive and hopefully thrive in such an imperfect world,

then to be flawed and still utterly lovable yourself?   

My mother is the most honest person I know, a trait she didn't pass genetically down to me, I can sadly assure you. 

She possesses an endless capacity for understanding and a willingness and desire to be helpful that shocks me, even though I've witnessed it first hand, been the recipient of it, over and over again my entire life.   She never ceases to amaze me with her extraordinary and sometimes unappreciated characteristics, which are truly gifts; compassion, patience, steadfastness, genuineness, practicality, initiative and grace.

  

There were times in my life where I couldn't stand to be away from my mother, even when I was almost grown.   I loved her so ferociously, not for just her wonderfulness, but because she was absolutely the only person in the world who truly knew me completely and totally and yet she loved me anyhow.   No one else could or would if they knew me as she did and does.  

Even when it was time for me to leave home, I hated the idea of her not seeing me daily.  

Couldn't stand the possibility of being forgotten by her for even just a day, which is likely why I did so many memorable and not always lovely things throughout my entire life, to keep at the forefront of her mind.   In my head, to be forgotten by the person who loved me best in the world might mean the actual end of my existence. 

I fretted her dying and obsessed about her ever really being gone from my life for those reasons.  

I don't worry about that anymore.

Somehow, I don't worry about her ever being away from me or about being forgotten.    She's finished her work with me I guess.  I must be grown, because I no longer need to be a headache to her to know that she won't ever stop loving me.  I know this like I know my own name.

And I don't need to see her or hear her voice to know what she'd say to me.  

I can locate her at any time, day or night, inside me.   

Remarkable to have been inside someone,

 come from someone,

 only to later have them live in you.  

She once gave me a wallet and inside it, a card with this inscription, which was meant for someone else from someone else, but to me, it's "ours" alone, always, always...

"I will not forget you, I have carved you on the palm of my hand"

Isaiah 49:16

And on your birthday, I say to you Mom; I will not forget you, I have filled myself up with all that you give me, so I won't ever run out of you.

Odd song to have remind you of your mother, but it does...
I gave her this album on her birthday in 1988.


Once upon a time, once when you were mine...