A Christmas Memory with Mom

This morning while drinking my coffee, one of the songs from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" played over our sound system.

The music, as good music has a habit of doing, took me right back to the mid-1960s and one of my sweetest holiday memories. 

I grew up fairly poor. One of the things I've always loved about my mom, who passed away in 2007, was that she always put myself and my sisters first. Our happiness was hers.

But it wasn't always easy to deliver on that happiness. My mother worked hard, both inside and outside of our modest two-bedroom house in the foothills of the Appalachians, but she did her best, along with my father, to see that we were provided for and, if we were lucky, even had some extras.

We may have not had a lot, but we always had enough.

Getting back to that Vince Guaraldi music, it reminded me of one of those special times with my mom that still remains vivid in my memory, even if what happened occurred over fifty years ago.

It was 1965. I was seven years old and was excited to see this new holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" which had been advertised on TV. Typical of kids of my generation, I was often glued to the tube a good portion of my spare time, lying on the living room floor with a pillow. 

Mom had bigger plans for me than just watching the show on our black and white console TV. She knew a woman who bartended at a little neighborhood bar up the street from where we lived.

On the night the show would debut, Mom took me out. Just me. The two of us headed to the bar at the time "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was slated to air. See, the bar had something we didn't have at home--a color television. She wanted me to be able to watch this magical animated special in all its color glory.

We sat together at the bar, which was almost empty at that relatively early hour, drinking Cokes and watching Charlie Brown and his friends discover the magic and true meaning of Christmas.

Like the Christmas tree in that special, this probably sounds humble. But it was, and always will be, special to me because, for once in my life, I had Mom all to myself, just the two of us alone. That hadn't happened before and I'm not sure it ever did again.

That night was one of the most special Christmas presents I've ever received--the gift of not just a classic holiday special debuting, but the gift of quality time with a mother who loved me and who was always spread far too thin. The fact that she made time for the two of us that night will always live in my heart as the true meaning of the holiday.

Giving is always better than receiving. Right, Mom?

Today is Mom's Birthday

Today is my mom's birthday.

She passed away nine years ago from cancer in October of 2007.

I still miss her every day, but I've learned to live with the world-changing upset loss of a mother can cause. I do that by being grateful for having had her for 49 years, 49 years of being loved and made to feel like everything I said or did mattered so much to her, 49 years of caring, 49 years of laughter, 49 years of love. I count my blessings and don't despair.

I'm Glad She Wants to Stay Awake

Last night, I had the pleasure of doing a reading at Seattle's historic Rendezvous in Belltown. It was a lot of fun. The organizers asked me, as part of my reading, to respond to a prompt, which was, "I'm glad she wants to stay awake, but I don't know. Is that really the best way?" This is what I wrote (and read): 

"I'm glad she wants to stay awake, but I don't know. Is that really the best way?"

“What are you talking about?” Alan rolls over in bed to regard me with a quizzical stare.

“She should sleep. She should rest,” I tell him.

“Who?”

“Oh come on, you know who. My mother.”

Alan doesn’t say anything. I can feel him staring at me in the dark and I don’t know if I can bear to meet his gaze, to see the sympathy in his eyes. Instead, I look up at the ceiling and repeat, “I’m glad she wants to stay awake.” I feel his hand, warm on my chest, put there in an attempt to comfort. I want to twist my chest upward to knock it off. “She wants to stay awake,” I say again, a little ticked.

We’re both tired. Not just from the funeral this morning, but from witnessing the long-range war that goes by the ubiquitous name—cancer. I can think of nothing else but Mom in that room at the hospice, afraid that if she succumbed to her weariness and allowed her eyes to close, she’d never open them again.

I change the tense of my statement, turning my head at last to look at this person next to me, this person who’s meant to be comfort. “She wanted to stay awake.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know.”

The tears, which have been threatening to come for a very long time, but always delayed, spring up, trickle down. “I wanted her to stay awake. But she didn’t. And I never got the chance to say ‘I love you.’

Alan snuggles closer, rests his head on my chest. “You didn’t have to say the words. She knew.”

“She went to sleep,” I pronounce, thinking that Alan, who knew me better than anyone, was right.

“And it was the best way,” he says softly.

I pull him close. “Let’s sleep.”

We lay silent for a long time, until I hear the deepening of Alan’s breath beside me. I nudge him, poking my elbow gently into his side. His breathing changes and I know he’s awake again.

“What?” he wonders.

“I love you,” I say.

(Photo courtesy of David Warner)