It is beginning to seem like fall is coming in around the corner. My mother lives in Oklahoma, and at her age she can be quite feisty when she wants to. At least that is what mom tells me during our daily telephone conversations. "It's getting a bit nippy." Most days as she has for her adult life is up every morning by 4:30 AM, if she oversleeps she will be up by 5:30 AM. She has been blessed in her life as she was the second oldest of nine children and to date still has five living brothers and one sister that she tries to keep in touch with on a regular basis.
Everyday before I get busy with my day, I will call her just to see how she is doing and keep her up to day on what my kids and grandson are doing and how the oil spill clean up is going. Then we discuss politics, men, doctors and how they do not listen when she wants them to change her medication or take her off of something that is not doing her any good. It always seems that with every discussion and conversation I find that the gap that was once so wide between us is becoming less wide and we are coming to a common understanding of why our differences kept us apart and so far away from one another. I think about her being 81 years of age, going to be 82 September 30 and that I have been blessed to have her in my life this long.
My best friend lost her mother (Dr. H. Wilson) five years ago and Dr. Wilson had been such a mother figure to me that I find myself missing her everyday and there is not a time goes by when Karen and I talk that we do not bring up something that her mother would tell us about mothering our children, and she was always right. I am always thankful for having the privileged of knowing Dr. Wilson as she is a part of Alabama Medical history as being the first Black American Woman Doctor to be given the right to practice medicine in the state. She was a woman of powerful wisdom and she never saw a person for the color of their skin but for the goodness in their heart. A strong lesson she taught me, and the other was to open my heart and forgive the past. To let go of the issues we cannot change, but can improve as I move forward. I am thankful for those lessons Dr. Wilson taught me and gave me the shove to put into practice, which lead me to calling my mom on a daily basis.
If not for Dr. Wilson giving me that shove I may not have found hidden in the back of my memory all those good memories that I had being around my mom when I was a child. I grew up always knowing that my mother's favorite child was my sister, and I was always the last person when it came to having any of her time. Now, even though there is 2,000 miles between us, she is next to me every morning during our telephone conversations and it will be those memories that will get me through life to share with my kids and grandchildren as the mother she was to me. There has been so much lost time, conversations that should have been, that never happened, but we have now moved beyond those unspoken conversations and she is still mom and I am still her daughter, all grown up with kids and grand kids of my own. The memories keep coming day in and day out some exciting, happy, and some discouraging, upsetting, and yet we continue to move forward and the sun will set tonight just as the sun will rise tomorrow.
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