Mothers Live Forever

I dreamt about my Mother this morning. It was one of those reality-defying, vivid dreams right before waking that refuses to dissipate with the morning mist.

She and I had been to a church service and she was driving us home, both weary and hungry and needing an afternoon nap. I kept looking at her, touching her, amazed she was with me - breathing, laughing, alive.

The dream took on an Alice in Wonderland quality, featuring exploding-with-color scenery and animals acting like people. The seasons were overlapping, so even as purple crocuses, lemon-yellow daffodils, and red-lipstick tulips were reaching for the sun, the leaves on the trees were scarlet and sunset-orange, just starting their final flight to the earth.

As we were driving and chatting we saw three cats, holding paws, rise as one on their hind legs so they could practice walking upright. They were having so much fun, we laughed in delight at their attempt to be human. I grasped my Mom's hand and told her these were precious moments. I didn't know how much time we had left and wanted to burn every image into my memory forever.

She smiled at me, her sky-blue eyes shining with understanding. A Mother's love never dies...

I woke up to my husband's laughter. My Mom's best friend was on the phone, calling to celebrate the day. It was my Mom's birthday today. She would have been 84. She lived life with such zeal and zest, I expected her to live into her 90s. I needed her to live into her 90s...

She would call every Sunday afternoon and we would talk and laugh about our week. Now Sundays are never quite 'right' anymore. When she visited us, our kitchen would magically transform from grungy to spotless, all the holes in our clothes would be mended, and we would cook lavish meals for the simple joy of doing it together.

She taught me to cook as a young girl and there was nothing the two of us wouldn't tackle. From homemade bread, pizza, fruit pies and traditional Mennonite delicacies like perisky (pie-by-the-yard), to Chinese, Greek (calamari) and German dishes, my Mom and I conquered them all. When I cook now I conjure memories of our time together to make it seem less like work...

What I miss most is the mind-reading. She could tell how I was feeling even though we lived 800 kilometers apart. She would phone (on days that weren't Sundays) to ask what was wrong. We were so close, we felt each others pain. Just as now, I get glimpses of her joy...


My best friend grew up eating my Mom's perisky and asked my Mom to design her shining, satin wedding gown. Wendy wrote me this poem shortly after my Mom died. Through it she captured the trinity of our relationship - my Mom and I and He - her love for her Lord and her love for me.

Her work-weathered hands
Held yours, smooth, young,
And His, work-weathered, too,
Enfold the both of you.

Prayer, prayer
Always
His hand in hers,
And hers in His,
Moving
Over the dark face of the water
Chaos, fear,
Smoothed to ripples
Peace, be still, my daughter!

Always,

His heart in hers
And hers in His
Intertwined like careful stitching
Satin shining
His bride
Her heart on fire inside.

Always,
Her plans in His
And His in hers.
Deft fingers weed neat rows of sod
And seeds planted deep within you
Burst their casings, stretching up to God.
He smiles,
His garden well-tended.

Always,
Her work in Him
And His in her
Until
Her pastry-floured hands
Berry-stained
Lie still
And His, wood worker rough,
lift her gently to her
New home.

Her eyes shine in His
And His in hers
Together,
they reach the sky
and paint
sunsets in your favorite colors
Her whispers in His ear
Carry soft prayers,
Comfort in the night
Her hands softly stroke your shining hair.

Someday soon
It won't be long now,
Can't you smell the fresh cut timber?
Her work-weathered hands
Will reach for yours, smooth and young,
And His, work-weathered, too
Will enfold both of you
For always

I can hardly wait to enfold her work-weathered hands in my own again!
Do you treasure the moments you have with your Mother? What special memories do you have of her if she is gone?

Remember Life Before The Internet?

Fifty years ago, when I was born, there were no mandatory car seats to take me home from the hospital. We didn't even have seat belts - my Mom simply held me in her arms.

There were no computers, no email or Facebook to tell all our friends and relatives (and people we didn't even know) the good news.

We had a Brownie box camera so it was impossible to post photos of me when I was just minutes old.

The cell phone was merely a dream (Maxwell Smart was ahead of his time with the shoe phone in 1965). Since the hospital only had a pay phone and we were poor, my parents waited until I came home to call people up. As for the relatives that lived a long distance away, my Mom mailed them a note. Yes snail mail!

I grew up with a rotary-dail phone and a party line. I would spend hours listening in to conversations other people had in our neighbourhood, until my Mom caught me in the act.








We had a whole whack of 8-tracks and I would become totally frustrated when they cut out in the middle of a song, with a big click, to switch to another track before the music continued. There simply had to be better technology than this.

When me and my 12-year-old best friend both got transistor radios for Christmas, we would tune them in to the same station and set them up at opposite ends of the room, cranking up the volume - ahhhh, stereo...

Vinyl was all the rage and I had my share of 45s and 78s, some of which are worth a lot of coin in today's market. 

Different artists used "backmasking" to put messages on their albums that could be heard only when played backwards.

This became a marketing tool used most notably by The Beatles on their White Album, where the phrase "turn me on, dead man," fueled rumors that Paul McCartney was dead. Other artists like Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa also used backmasking to sell millions of records.


Our world seems like the Dinosaur Age compared to the children today, growing up with lap-tops, iPhones and digital cameras.

Yet this is not unlike the stories my grandparents and even my parents told me when I was young.

• My grandparents and my father were persecuted for their faith in Russia. I heard tales of forged passports, gunshots in the night, brothers and sisters forceably separated, having to leave the country with the clothes on their back, long train rides and then ten days at sea before reaching Canada.
• My Dad told me what it was like to feel hunger, every day. He and his brothers would shoot deer, rabbits, gophers, anything – just to try to feed a family of 12.
• My Mom talked about rising at 4 am to milk the cows. One of her younger brothers would always follow her, squeezing one of the cow’s teats to send a jet of warm milk on his oatmeal.

• During the Depression, my grandfather was one of the first people to drive a "Bennett Buggy." Unable to afford gasoline, he took out the engine of his Model T and hooked the emasculated vehicle to their two horses driving it proudly into downtown Winnepeg. My Mom and the rest of the family were ecstatic when they found out the Winnipeg Free Press published a photo of him and his horse-drawn carriage on the front page. 

• My Mom yearned to read, write and draw but only got through Grade 6 before she was “needed” at home. I tried to imagine how she must have felt when her whole family gathered around the radio after WWII to listen with horror and disbelief to the atrocities that killed millions of Jews. My grandfather proclaimed Hitler as the anti-Christ and Armageddon near.

Both my parents encouraged my brother and I to go as far as we could with our education. They wanted us to live out the dreams they had to forgo.
My parents sacrificed so much so that we could have all the things they did not.

I feel a debt of gratitude I can never repay, except with a life well-lived. It was what they wanted most.

I now have all the photos from my grandparents and parents, some of them dating back to the late 1800′s, when photography was just beginning.

It is a treasure to have this family history and look back on the time before the computer and Internet; a time of countless family gatherings, fruit-filled perisky and other Mennonite foods cooked by my aunts, simple games we would make up on the spot and stories told over and over again.

What are some of your memories before the computer age?

Check out Lisa's inspiring blog on the same topic but from a different point of view.