My mother was placid, calm, relaxed, well, to be perfectly honest, she was pretty much the exact opposite of her oldest daughter, me. I was spunky, full of fire, wildly independent, and as a result, I gave her every gray hair she had.
Yes, she had other children, but they were different than me, and actually not grey hair worthy. My older brother was born an adult and started ranching at the age of potty trained, so he wasn’t around to give her any trouble. My younger sister was sweet, tenderhearted, gentle, quiet and, ah, “the perfect child”. She was very much like the mother who raised her. I am not exaggerating here, because it was true, “Mom always liked her best”, because she was so much easier to raise.
Then there was her difficult middle child, AKA me. I was born early, weighed under five pounds, and my grandfather died the day after I was born, so I started out challenging the norm. I fought that loving woman every step of infancy through preschool and challenged the placid in her nerves to slightly ruffled. I wanted. I did. I challenged. I yelled. I even threw things. I stomped. I slammed. I stammered. I locked doors. I ran. I umphed. I wandered. I cried. I defied. All the while, she patiently let me. Sometimes I could get her to slightly overheated, but she wasn’t the angry or mad type. Did I mention she was placid? Calm? Unwavering?
Most likely she learned over those years of dealing with this bundle of energy, that nothing worked to calm the raging storm within this child. Most often she let me express the fire within me in whatever way I chose that day or that hour. However, sometimes the water rippled and there were times even she had a limit. That is when she went to the drawer and got out “the dreaded wooden spoon”. At the touch of the drawer handle I knew she meant business, and I had reached the peak of don’t push it any further. That usually initiated a retreat on my part, but there were usually a couple of stomps involved. I would hide in my room, outside behind the barn or walk around the safe perimeter of the homestead.
It was most likely a very celebrated day when I finally, finally went to school. Since I had a late fall birthday, I went to kindergarten twice proving once again to challenge the norm. The first time I missed I Love Lucy the entire time, so the kind teacher granted me another year of watching the red headed lady’s antics at 9:00 am daily.
Throughout the school years, I was a model student, but weren’t most of us back then? There were still frustrated outbursts from this high energy child, but mostly just on weekends. She would calmly tend to her cooking, sewing, cleaning duties while my sister and I would fight about who was to clean which side room, who had the easier chore, and why it wasn’t fair for two odd days to be next to each other. She was born on the 15th of the month so she got dish duty of odd days. I was born on the 8th of the month, so I got even day dish day chores. It wasn’t fair, so despite life not being fair, those days Mom would help Robin with the dish duty, while I cheered the two days off.
Did I mention my sister was just like my mom, placid, calm and rarely ruffled, but like my mom, she had her moments too, so there were sister fights. It was then Mom would say, “Don’t come to me, you girls need to work it out on you own”. Since we only had each other for friends living out in the country, we usually worked it out pretty fast, and soon would be happy turning the dining room table into a Barbie mansion, rummaging through Mom’s fabric scraps and designing clothes for the Barbies and sometimes us.
As we grew older my mom, sister and I became the household, women’s work team. Mom did the laundry, Robin the garden, yard and feeding the cats duty, and I cooked. The TV in the living room was tuned in throughout the day, so we took turns monitoring the actions Katherine Chancellor, Victor Newman, Erica Kane and many others. We played along with the game shows, commented to talk shows, but my favorite time of the day was after the men went to bed and the three of us would stay up and watch Johnny Carson, and sometimes we would just talk.
During the patient tending hours while she was in and out of hospitals her last few years, I would remain as long as possible and soak up her presence. I wanted to experience being her daughter every minute I could, knowing someday I would not have her beside me. Since her leaving on her heavenly journey, I have learned I didn’t store nearly enough moments of her presence especially on Mother’s Day. However, when the house is quiet after everyone is in bed, I can find and feel the mother-daughter connection we had, and I am blessed. I might add, I miss Johnny Carson about as much as I miss her, but thankfully have a DVR and daughter to carry on the tradition of simply sharing in the quiet part of the evening as mother and daughter.