Meditation
on Mom
John Gehring
Sitting in a hotel room in Austin, Texas,
this Mother’s Day I thought about her. The
woman who changed my diapers, drove me to
school, rubbed away my boyhood bumps and
bruises. The woman who packed my lunch every day
and sat through countless baseball games on
scorching 90-degree Saturdays on some dusty ball
field in the middle of nowhere. The woman who,
like the good former English teacher she is,
still reads my stories on the hunt for comma
splices or dangling participles. The woman whom,
even at 26, I still call to ask how to make my
chicken dinner or what special remedy to use to
rid my pants of that tomato sauce stain. The
woman who reminded me before my business trip
that May 14 was indeed Mother’s Day and I
would be sure to call.
On television the news reports showed mothers
rallying in Washington, D.C., at the Million Mom
March. They were there to support gun control
legislation and let Congress, the National Rifle
Association and others know that they meant
business. Maybe it was not being around the
table eating another great meal served from the
kitchen of a woman who juggles so many tasks in
a single day that Barnum and Bailey Circus
should sign her up to go on the road, but I
began thinking more about my mom and mothers everywhere.
I didn’t give much thought to the demands
of motherhood as a boy growing up. Like my
16-year-old brother, and sons everywhere, for
most of my life I thought God created Mom to
wash my dirty underwear or tell me why I couldn’t
work on my ball handling in the living room. Mom
was a mythic figure who handed down yes or no,
bedtime curfews and acceptable television shows,
surely not a living, breathing human being like
the rest of us. In the mind of a child, a mother
has no past, no interests or passions other than
being Mom.
I’m not sure when I started thinking about
my mom as a real person. Having just recently
moved out of my parents’ house, I guess I
observed longer than most the mother-child
relationship up close and how it unfolds and
changes over the years. Here was my mother, a
bit grayer in the mane, spreading maps of Africa
out on the dining room table to help my brother
through a social studies project he had dumped
on her before stealing off to the basketball
court. It didn’t seem that long ago when that
was my project on the table, and she squinted
through tired eyes after a long day of work
trying to pinpoint Kinshasa, the capital of
Zaire, as her paperwork was pushed aside, the
phone rang, the dinner boiled over and I did my
part to be understanding by asking every two
minutes when dinner would be ready. Seeing her
still there at the dining room table years
later, I couldn’t help thinking that
motherhood demands the agility of a crafty
captain navigating his boat through a gauntlet
of icebergs while making sure his passengers’
wine glasses are freshly filled
So there in my Austin hotel room I looked
back and realized I had come a good ways these
last few years. Sure, my mom will always be Mom
in my eyes. The person who still occasionally
washes my socks or folds my pants or tells me I
still can’t work on my ball handling in the
house. But I know there is a woman behind the
mask that all mothers wear in the eyes of their
children. One who has, between all the daily
duties that weigh on her and turn her hair
grayer, taught me how to live a life.
I still see her coming in too late from work
sometimes and wish I could just write her big
fat checks so she wouldn’t have to do it any
more. I know she wishes this sometimes too
because she half jokingly asks when I am going
to write that best seller so she can retire. I
will get there someday. But in the meantime,
Mom, thanks for all the times I should have said
that but never did.
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