With Older Eyes

As this day draws to a close, I find myself lost in thought. I spent the day with my mother helping her with preparing food for her annual holiday girl's gathering tomorrow. We worked for over 9 hours, & still didn't get it all done. Craziness, I tell ya.

Me & Mom, Christmas 2009

I love my mother. I really do. Despite having a rocky relationship historically. People change, relationships change & for that I am so thankful. Can you imagine if I never had the chance to have a semi-normal relationship with someone whose primary job is to care for me & love me?

What I see now, & understand now as an adult, is no matter how bad things got - & trust me, at times, they got too bad for words - she still loved me. And I truly think that even though I knew that in my heart to be the truth, I didn't believe it then. How could I? At the time I was living in my close personal hell, unsure if I would make it out alive.

I never wanted for anything... Well, nothing physically, at least. She always provided for me, we had a great house filled with everything we ever wanted. I never had to worry about going hungry or the food we were going to eat. She made sure we had everything we needed, even if she had to work 3 jobs to get it. She was a single parent doing the best she knew how, & I was disabled to boot. Can you imagine?

What wasn't there was the emotional part. I longed for her to be my soft place to fall. To have a loving supportive relationship that I had seen my friends have with their mothers. I wanted to be safe & feel loved. I wanted her to be my best friend.

It wasn't until recently that I realized that she couldn't give me what she didn't have. She is only human & has many flaws. She was just a woman doing the best she could, even if she made mistakes or did things she shouldn't do. I am positive there were many times when she felt unloved, under appreciated, depressed & angry. She had doubts, questions & concerns. Again, she was human.

Perhaps I can see things more clearly, from a different point of view, bc I so deeply desire to be a mother myself. And she so deeply desires to be a grandparent. I don't know if that is what God has planned for us.

What I do know is that God planned for her to be my mom & for me to be her child. Taking the bad with the good, I know that without a shadow of a doubt, she was the best mom she knew how to be when she knew how to be it. And I wouldn't have it any other way.