Old Mothers

You can be outside of Christmas, looking into the cozy scene with longing, and you can also feel beyond Christmas. Looking back at my mother’s brave efforts to make wonderful holidays for me and my father when there wasn’t much money to spend, I see the image of a woman rowing a small boat into a storm-tossed sea. Goodness, did I ever, ever, even as an adult, ask her what her life was like? Really listen?

No. The late spring bulbs of sympathy and understanding toward her are only now poking their noses up through the compost of my many years. So, Mom, this is what you went through, the joy of parenting a child, the heartbreak of watching her go and the long impatience waiting for her to recognize you. Duh.

Did she know the stockings she stuffed, the doll she made and the hip-roofed doll-barn she encouraged my father to build me, the expensive, beautiful horse books she bought me, all the more credit to her since she disliked horses in general, would go unappreciated? Sure, I was polite but I never gave up my grudge against her: that I never got the one thing I wanted which was a real, live horse of my own in our real barn. A real saddle, a real bridle with a real bit. Brushes and a hoof pick. The sweet smell of horse on me day and night.

Mom really flexed her creative muscles to make up for this permanent loss. But it was never enough for me. Selfish, bratty kid that I was.

But now, years later, I salute my long-departed Mom. Perhaps not departed altogether. Perhaps sitting on top of a snowy cloud, clicking her heels together as she peers down at me.

“You got your horse, after all,” she says. “So Merry Christmas and stop whining.”