In awe of my mom

The house in which I grew up, five miles south of town, was a modest one. It was a retired farm that had fallen on hard times, which is why my parents got it for a song. But Dad put countless hours into making the house not only habitable, but comfortable for his young family, making it a wonderful place to do one’s growing up.

At the center of that house, though, was the woman who made it a home: my mother.

Mom never had any ambition to become a career woman. She worked hard at whatever job she did, but she wanted her life’s work to be that of raising a family and making a home for us. And she did it well.

Although Mom never considered it her job to entertain my sister or me, my childhood memories are entirely happy ones. I remember summer vacations spent swimming at the Helen Stevens Memorial Pool, taking dusty walks down Shabbona Road, and visiting cousins in Kingston.

Christmas breaks were filled with cookie-baking and frosting-licking, watching movies and decorating the house for the holidays.

And then there were all the days in between.

The day when an older kid ran into me on the playground, giving me a bloody nose (and a blood-stained shirt), mom was there within a few minutes with a hug, a change of clothes, and the assurance that a bloody nose did not warrant an early release from school.

The days when she picked me up from school to take me downtown for a lunch at Subway and a talk about how my day was going.

The days when I was sick, and she made things better with a soothing hand on my face, a glass of Sprite, and a Three Stooges video. She knew the way to her boy’s heart.

Although I was not able to express it at the time, I felt loved coming home from school to a clean and orderly house. And the occasional specially-made snack (graham cracker sandwich cookies and caramel apples were favorites) always let me know that Mom had been thinking of me while I was away at school.

Not every day was a walk in the park. I knew exactly how to push my mother’s buttons, and I pushed them often. It’s not that I was a bad kid, my mother tells me. It’s just that I was very strong-willed and had potent opinions about what I was going to do (some things never change, I hear my wife say over my shoulder).

But Mom knew how to handle me, sometimes with a verbal rebuke, other times with a hearty swat. Even then, though, I think I would have reluctantly admitted that Mom’s discipline demonstrated her love for me.

Now that I have children of my own and have a better understanding of how skilled little people are at pushing their parents’ buttons, I am even more in awe of my mother and her dedication to her life’s work.

Mom, thanks for investing in me and for making my childhood so rich.