You've Got A Friend

I was watching the Today Show this morning and they were interviewing these two girls who are best friends and were involved in the shooting at the theater in Colorado last week. I've seen them over the course of the past couple of days but never really paid attention to their story until today.

Allie (the girl in the glasses) was shot in the neck and told her friend Stephanie to save herself and leave the theater. Stephanie stayed by her friend's side and applied pressure to the wound until the shooting stopped and then got her out of the theater and to an ambulance. It was really touching to see these young girls who had such a strong friendship that they were willing to risk their lives for one another.

But the really amazing thing was what Allie said about the shooter. She actually felt sorry for him that he was in such a bad place in his life that he was able to commit such a heinous act. She said that maybe if he had a best friend like the one she had, he wouldn't have been such a loner and quite possibly...things may have gone a different way for him.

Silent and Thankless

I remember when I was a teenager and my mom asked me why I wasn't hanging out with a particular friend anymore and I told her we had a falling out. She said that she was glad because she didn't think she had been a good friend to me. When I asked her why she never said anything my mom told me it was really difficult not to get involved, but that she had to trust that I would eventually figure it out for myself.

That is a perfect example of the type of mom she is. She silently and thanklessly has been running the show and keeping our family going for over fifty years. My whole life my dad worked really hard to build a successful business and like many men of his generation, he wasn't around all the time. I think because of this, my siblings and I vied like crazy for his attention. Having to share him with two brothers and a sister meant his limited time was really cherished. All the while, my stay-at-home mom was always there. We never vied for her attention because it was so readily available.

Being a stay-at-home mom with four kids and a workaholic husband could not have been easy. Once when she got so overwhelmed she locked herself in the bathroom. We yelled at her through the door and when she didn't respond, we passed her notes under the door. She thought it might help to get out of the house so she tried to go to work for the family business. She spent most of the day on the phone with us as we called in constantly asking for things or complaining about each other. After one day she said it wasn't worth it. I can't say that we intentionally sabotaged her career plans, but I'm sure we were all too happy to have her back at home with us, making our meals and refereeing our fights.

The first time I realized how great my mom is was when I went to college and I no longer had someone silently and thanklessly doing so much for me. The second time I realized how great my mom is was when I had my own children. There's no performance review. There's no way to know whether or not you're doing a good job. The third time I realized how great my mom is was on Monday when I went with her to the hospital to get information on her hip surgery.

In 1998 my dad had valve replacement surgery. Until then he had been an incredibly healthy person, rarely getting sick and never missing work. Since that first surgery until he died in 2010, he was never quite as healthy and my mom silently and thanklessly was responsible for attending to all his healthcare needs.

Now, for the first time in her 77 years, my mom is going to have surgery. Now, for the first time in over fifty years of being the caretaker, she is the one who needs to be taken care of. Now, for the first time in forty-five years of life, I am responsible for my mom's well-being. Now, I don't have her to be the silent and thankless rock that holds our family together, but just like when I was a teenager, she will have to trust that I will figure it out. How can I not? She has been my example.

Barefoot in the Wet Grass

Well, it's nearing the end of another school year. My daughter is finishing up fifth grade which marks the end of our family's time at our neighborhood elementary school. Next year she will join her brother in the middle school. While she has slowly been asserting her independence over the past several months and I have been slowly relinquishing some of my responsibilities to her care, I know it will be a difficult transition...for me.

The one thing that will make it easier is that I know she is so ready for the change. She spent part of the weekend with her beloved cousin who is just finishing her first year in middle school and has loved it.

While the girls and I were together I completed my annual pre-summer read, "Seventeenth Summer" by Maureen Daly. The book takes place in Fond du Lac in the early 1940's during the summer between a young woman's high school graduation and first year of college. Since this summer will be the year between elementary school and middle school for my daughter, I think I read it with a different mindset. It's funny how you can read a book so many times and get something different out of it each time. Usually I read it because I love the descriptions of Wisconsin summers and it makes me so excited for summer to begin. This year it was the description of getting older and growing up that struck me:

We had never known about anything unpleasant. Our whole lives had been little-girl lives, crowded first with thoughts of kindergarten and going for exciting walks with the class in the early gray of spring to gather pussy willows along the creek banks, and eating oranges on the school playground at recess, oranges with skins so thick that they gave off a fine spray of fragrant oil when they were peeled...After Kitty the days went faster, merging into long Wisconsin winters with snowdrifts piled almost up to the living-room windows, and hot, still summers with the sunlight pouring through the trees like yellow honey...we were changing. Things that had once been so important didn't matter any more. Carnivals still came to town and set up their Ferris wheels in bright wheels of light against the night sky and pitched little striped tents all stained brown with rain, but we no longer felt the same ecstatic thrill. And we didn't go out barefoot in the wet grass hunting for tiny, green-brown toads that came out after the rain. Our thoughts were on different things.

Reading that triggered a memory of one beautiful summer evening playing with a neighborhood friend in an empty lot down the hill from our house on Glacier Pass. I must have been about my daughter's age and I was playing with a neighbor girl and we were searching for frogs and grasshoppers. The air was warm but not too hot and I vividly remember the feeling of pure happiness and the dread that it would all come to an end with the setting of the sun. No matter how many other evenings we would go down to that lot and play, it would never feel quite the same.

It's funny that a book written in 1942 that would seem to some so old-fashioned is one of my favorites. It reminds me that some of our best memories can come from the simplest moments.

In Progress

Sometimes my mom says the best things. Her comment to me yesterday was to write a new blog already...she's tired of reading about tampons.

I'm noodling a new blog entry but also have been swamped with work related projects so it has to be put on the back burner. I will try to get something up soon. Check back regularly.

Thanks Mom!