A Repost For My Mom, who would be 91 today...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2009

Happy birthday, Jennie May

Happy birthday, Mom. This is the day I will celebrate your birth, eighty seven years ago today. You got to see your sixty-third birthday, and three days more. You got to see your children grown, and some of their children grown. You got to see what a big beautiful family you had created. You expressed pride and contentment at the family reunion in your honor that last birthday weekend.

In the chaos that was our family life, you taught me love. To love a child or a handicapped person or an old person or an animal. To love a man who is flawed. To 'have a little talk with God' when things crashed in around me.

I miss you, Mom. You are always in my heart, and often on my mind. Your voice is the voice I hear when I need strength and guidance at a patient's bedside. Your hands guide mine as I soothe the sick and vulnerable. Your dedication and uncompromising standards of patient care helped set my own standards. You are never forgotten and always with me.

I only wish you could have been here to see my kids. They are awesome. I know you are with us, I know you can see and feel them from where you are now. I have tried to bring you to life for them through stories and favorite objects of yours. But, I just wish you were here, for them, for us, for me.

Thank you for being my mom, my friend, my example. 

Happy birthday, Mama.

The Language of My Soul

I was given a writing assignment in nursing school; to write something that reflects 'the language of my soul'.  Hmmm... could be open to many interpretations.  But, there are fundamental truths about me, the woman I am, the nurse I was becoming, and the people who made me whole.  Irrevocable truths.  Relationships come and go, but three things remain...


First, I am an outdoors woman.  Before husband, before children, before escaping the birth home, I found solace and meaning in the out of doors.  It is the breath of the wind, the hush of the forest and the scent of pine and moss and water that soothed the soul of a hurt child.  I think the Earth saved my sanity, and thus, my life.


Second, I am a mother.  I have wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember.  Except for a few short terms in college when, deeply involved in the women's movement, I questioned my desire and probed its source and motivation.  Was I merely acquiescing to a paternal structure designed to exploit women?  Was I giving in to hormones before I was mature enough to analyze their trickery?  Nope, I decided.  I wanted to be a mother, a good one, at the right time, with the right person.


Motherhood is irreversible, thus becoming a fundamental part of a woman's life.  Once a mother, always and forever, a mother.


A third important component to my soul is the long term relationship I have had with my husband; a ten year courtship full of passion and pain and resistance to change and eagerness to change and laughter and anger that commenced at age eighteen for me, twenty eight for him.  Then, a marriage that has lasted thirty years.  I have been married to him as long as I was not.  I have borne his name longer than I did my father's.  I cannot imagine life without him.  


These three things, then, comprise the language of my soul:  the out of doors and my place in it, motherhood and my children, and my love for my husband.


So, this is what I turned in to the instructor, 'The language of my soul...'


'The language of my soul is spoken in babies' sighs and nuzzles against my breast; in a thousand inaudible words of love seen in the eyes of my graying husband.  It sings in the wind on my face as I stand on a rimrock filling my lungs.  It whispers quietly by on the bow of my boat and between my trailing wet fingers.  It hollers its robust pride as I watch my son orchestrate daring complexities on the field with his wondrous young body.  It swirls and twirls gracefully around the long strong limbs of my dancing daughter.  It whispers in awed hushed wonder at my eldest navigating a vast technological world, a world I can neither comprehend or visit.  It soothes me as I soothe others; my children, my husband, my friends, my patients.  As I help them, I help myself.  And I feel whole.'