I miss my mom

Eighteen years after her death and a few days before what would have been her 90th birthday, I find myself still missing my mom.

Our relationship was often rocky, especially for all the years from my earliest real memories until my kids were old enough to appreciate her. I often heard, with a sigh, that she wished I were more like my sisters—the older, gregarious, energetic one (who apparently always made straight As in school) or the younger, quieter, more feminine one (who also apparently always made straight As. Which I didn't).

Mother often referred to the older one as the squeaky wheel—the one who continually demanded and usually got attention. Big Sis never lacked for friends and seems in her middle 60s to have twice the energy I had at my best. She was an active member of the church's Girls Auxiliary and a Girl Scout, where she probably reveled in the advantages of being the leader's daughter. She always seemed to be surrounded by friends, and Mother reminded me regularly that Big Sis never sat at home on a Friday night, and Big Sis didn't have to be in the pep squad to go to all of the football games, and so what if I was editor of the school paper—Big Sis had been head of advertising for the school yearbook.

Big Sis always made good grades, and Big Sis trained to be a nurse—apparently the apex of achievement in Mother's eyes at a time when "women's jobs" were pretty much limited to nursing, teaching, and secretarial work. I often just assumed that Big Sis could do no wrong. And when I found myself off at college and grabbing a moment now and again to write home, I was pretty sure Mother was muttering under her breath that Big Sis still never missed her weekly letter . What could I say? Even today I'm pretty sure Big Sis never sleeps.

Because all of her energy and all the good I see her do, I've always felt lucky to call her my sister, but for most of my youth I was pretty sure I could just never measure up. I even convinced myself for a while that I wanted to be a nurse so I could be more like her, until I finally realized that medicine was not the road for me. But even that led me to respect and appreciate her more.

I was closer in age by 4 years to Middle Sis, who was in many ways different from Big Sis. Middle Sis always seemed to have friends, but they were fewer and quieter than those of Big Sis. Middle Sis dropped out of Girl Scouts by junior high school because she really had no interest in being outdoors (which makes it all the funnier that all three of her grown-up kids love camping). She was the one who went from tap and ballet (all the way to toe dancing! How impressed I was!) to school choir (one love she shared with Big Sis) to charm school.

Active in Sunday evening church groups from the time she started junior high school, Middle Sis met her future husband there when she was 14, married him before she turned 18, and has had a marriage I have longed for for most of its 44 years. If Mother ever groused about Middle Sis, it was usually that she always had her nose in a book, which was probably part of why she always made great grades in school—and managed to graduate from high school a year early. But Mother often muttered that Middle Sis never had trouble with school and always had a date on Saturday night, so why was I always sitting at home?

If we were Catholic I'm pretty sure Middle Sis would be eligible for sainthood, and I'm pleased for her that she eventually realized her childhood dream of becoming an English teacher, even though she had to get her own kids most of the way through public schools before she even got a shot at it. She spent a lot of my teenage years listening to me whine about Mother, and I wouldn't be surprised if she spent a lot of that time listening to Mother whine about me. Sainthood might not be good enough.

I never had to worry about being compared to Big Brother. Although his school years ended well before educators started to define and treat learning disabilities, he was clearly learning disabled; his first grade teacher spanked him daily for not being able to read. As a result, his grades were poor to bad most of the way to school, and he wound up repeating at least one grade in elementary school and ultimately earning a GED instead of a regular diploma.

In spite of his learning obstacles, Big Brother could take apart and put together nearly anything, and he spent hours in high school memorizing line after line of Shakespeare. He was generally at least outwardly happy-go-lucky, perfectly happy to spend hour after hour alone in a room that was more often than not an impassable pigpen. He fiddled, he doodled, he taught himself to build and rebuild, and he nurtured a sense of humor and creativity that eventually emerged as a sort of genius that endeared him to nearly everyone who got to know him.

But except for a successful if not distinguished tour of duty in the US Navy, Big Brother did little to hold up as a role model, and while I'm sure Mother was perplexed for years because he was "different" and she was uncomfortable with "differences," he was the last of us she asked to see before she died; I often think she held on those last few hours exactly because she needed to be sure he was safe one more time.

So for many years I just never seemed to measure up for Mother. I was a Girl Scout and became possibly the first aide ever to work exclusively in a specific camper unit at our local day camp, but that couldn't possibly have ever measured up to Big Sis's trip to a national Girl Scout Roundup. I begged to be allowed to take band, but that was nixed because Big Brother had been a failure there; Mother insisted I should be taking choir, even though I had been politely dismissed (and invited never to come back) in fifth grade because it was obvious that I was unavoidably, hopelessly tone deaf; I still can't begin to carry a tune.

My grades were never extraordinary, starting from sixth grade when my math teacher spent the whole year calling me by Big Brother's name (all the more perplexing if you know that he was tall, thin, and dark, and I was short, squat, and blonde) and giving me a final grade much more reminiscent of his than of either of my sisters'. None of my problems in school had anything to do with any of my siblings, but they did complicate my relationship with my mom.

That all began to turn around after I had gone off to college, spent a few years teaching in school districts in Houston, and moved back to my hometown to start a new life, which much to my delight included first one, then two, then three babies I adored. By the time my first was born, six of his seven cousins were at least 7 years older, and the seventh lived a good 3 hours away. That meant that if Mother wanted to have any convenient babies to hug on, mine were the available ones.

And they adored her. All of the older cousins had called her Grandmother Chris, carefully following their mothers' instruction. Mother never said anything to me about that except to tell meher own mother had become our Nana when an older cousin had been unable to pronounce "grandmother." But when my oldest trooped into her apartment one day and brightly said, "Hi, Mo!" he absolutely stole her heart.

For all those years that I had frustrated her by being the nonconformist, the one who didn't play by the rulebook, the one who didn't measure up, I finally had her attention: my own refusal or inability or whatever it was to conform and to make my children conform meant that 13 years after she had become a grandmother, Mother finally had her very own "grandmother" name. In fact, when the older cousins heard my kids calling her Mo, they immediately announced that they had always wanted a pet name for her, and several of them picked up Mo immediately.

For the next 10 years, I found myself often relying on her to lend a hand when I needed help with the kids, and I made a point to take them to play at her apartment as often as I could. When the last baby was only a few months old, I slipped on our stairs and broke my right ankle, rendering myself unable to drive; the first person I called for help in collecting the kids and myself from work and school was my Mother, and just as I anticipated, she was delighted to volunteer to help me out. She was working for the nearby university at the time and I was teaching school, but we quickly worked out a plan that allowed her to work until 5, drive to the school to pick me up, and then get to the day care center in time to pick up the kids before closing. More often than not, she would circle the drive-through at the local McDonald's to grab burgers or chicken nuggets for the boys and keep me from having to cook for them when we got home.

I can't imagine what I did to thank her for all of that, but whatever it was, I'm sure it wasn't enough. How could I have guessed then that being stuck at school until 5 would teach me to organize my time to finish work at work and have time at home for my family? How could I have said enough that I couldn't have done it without her?

Over the years that followed, the kids learned to love going to "Mo's house" as much as I had enjoyed spending time with my own Nana when I was a child. They quickly learned where she stored puzzles and books and games, and they'd race into the game cabinet, dump puzzle pieces all over her floor, and climb up in her lap for reading after reading of The Little Engine That Could and every other Little Golden Book in her collection. Mother would giggle as my girl would patiently guide her next older brother to "turn it and turn it" to get puzzle pieces to fit, and she loved their stream of stories about daily life at "school."

Mother's hearing never got so weak as to miss the sound of their childish voices, so she always appeared to be listening to them as closely as she really was. Before long, they began to realize that they could count on Mo to be completely attentive to them during the hours they spent at her house (or she spent at ours during occasional stretches when she helped me over other hurdles).

They loved their other grandmother, and they knew they could count on her for wonderful adventures and new clothes and toys and all kinds of spoiling they recognized as meaningful, but as long as Mo was alive, they felt much closer to her not only because of her proximity (a few minutes rather than several hours away), but also because she could hear them and always listened. While their other grandmother often gave them things that were out of my price range, they recognized that the time and attention my mother gave them was more than money could buy.

Not surprisingly, I soon developed a habit of picking up the phone whenever the kids said or did anything I thought was funny, and I knew she'd laugh when she heard even the silliest story. In the immediate flurry of cleaning her apartment, surviving her funeral, and reorganizing life to face the days without her, I knew those phone calls were over, but more than once over the next several weeks, I found myself reaching for the phone with a smile on my face because I had something I needed to share with her right now.

Sometimes I still wish I could. My oldest has just moved back home to try to carve out a new lease on his life, the middle child is biding time with part-time jobs until his full-time hitch in the Army begins, and the little one calls me time after time to tell me of exciting and wonderful things going on in her life that I know Mother would love to share. For all our rocky beginnings, for the best part of my adulthood I knew that she was proud of me—in fact, I'll never forget the day she said almost exactly those words to me—but what I miss is sharing my little joys with her. I find a modicum of comfort in believing that her spirit hasn't really gone far away from us, and she shares our joys in ways we just can't see.

Shortly before her death I gave her a silly little coffee mug that said "A Mother's Love Is Forever," because I wanted her to know the bond we had finally forged would not end with her death, which we knew by then was near. I slipped the mug away from her apartment when she died, and for some odd reason commissioned it as a toothbrush holder for my bathroom. Certainly its soft pink design and its ordinary style wouldn't make it a striking addition to my kitchen ware, and I've often thought that filling it with a warm cup of tea or hot vanilla milk would be a more respectful way to use it. But somehow it fits there in the cabinet in my bathroom, and that warm reminder of forever comes back to me every day.

And so here in the days before her birthday, I remember her fondly. And I realize that all these years between us have continued to draw us together, and I still miss my mom.