Last week was Nurses Week.
My Mama is a nurse. Lord knows
she deserves to be celebrated often and much, so it only seems fitting that
Mother’s Day fall right behind providing back-to-back reasons to cheer the
biggest cheerleader I’ve ever had. Mother
was a nurse long before the pin and diploma that made it official. I think she must have been born to take care
of others. It’s her love language. She was born to be a Mama, of this I am
absolutely certain.
The pin and the diploma?
They came later in her life. She
went back to school. She had a husband
and two children who were extremely used to and jealous of her time, and she went
back to school. And she did it with such
selfless grace. I’m so proud of her; I always have been. I don’t know that I ever told her so. Now, looking at it through my own mama eyes,
I am not only proud, I am in AWE of her.
I can see her, even now, settling
at our textbook covered breakfast room table to start studying as the rest of
us went to bed. There were times that
she was still there the next morning. It
had to have been so very hard.
I saw you, Mama.
Years and many, many labors and deliveries later, she sat at
the head of my bed as we tried desperately to coax her first grandchild into this world. Sandra my mother and Sandra
the labor and delivery nurse had quite a battle with each other as she watched
the monitors aware of what every dip, every irregularity meant but determined
to love me through it with a perfect calm.
She didn’t kill my doctor that day. She sure wanted to. She didn’t let me panic or quit. I sure wanted to. And when Grace finally arrived, healthy and
perfect and ours, when she saw her for the first time, I watched her fall
absolutely and completely in love with my little girl. I had a front row seat to the beginning of one
of my most favorite love stories.
We were all home for Christmas a few months ago, even our
dog. It was utter chaos. Loud and messy and wonderful. Mother spent too much time in the kitchen;
she always does. From the den you can
see her there listening and smiling, watching the children through the window
as they ride by on the four-wheeler, asking what we want to drink. And later when every gift had been opened and
an impressive mound of wrapping paper covered the floor, she was finally
still. And she watched her people. Soaking us in. Watching Daddy doze in his chair and her
girls trying on shoes and clothes, thinking how big the children were getting,
already wondering what in the world she’d get them next year. She glanced at the mantle to make sure
everyone had checked their stockings and thought how there were now 10 where
once had hung only 4. And though she hadn’t
gone to bed at a reasonable hour for days leading up to our visit just to make
certain that this moment would look EXACTLY like this, it wasn’t exhaustion
that she felt, but rather pure joy.
I saw you, Mama.
And now, and I suspect for always, when I question and doubt
and just don’t know exactly what to do, I look for you, Mama. What would my Mama do? And then I know with a perfect certainty –
she’d love you through it. She’d worry
and pray and sometimes cry and send you the most perfect notes and go from soft
as silk to tough as nails in the blink of an eye and just love you so big that you
couldn’t possibly doubt that everything would be alright. She’d love you through it. And then you’d look up, having come out on
the other side, and there she’d be, pom-poms in hand – your most loyal
cheerleader, your biggest fan.
And if I can do just a semblance of the job that she has
done. If I can love just half as
well. If I even BEGIN to wave my pom-poms
with a fraction of her enthusiasm, well, it will be because I saw you, Mama.