Tracey Marley

With Mother’s Day coming up, I wanted to post something about my mom. It’s an article I wrote some time back. I hope it will encourage you to make your own Mother’s Day To Do List and then carry it out. Enjoy!

My mom loves shoes. Not a style in particular, but shoes in general: brown, red, white and gold, high heels, sandals, loafers and flip-flops. They grace the walls of her closet in clear plastic containers. Occasionally I’ll sneak into her bedroom, squeeze my feet into a pair that are all a half-size too small, and prance around wishing they fit just so I could borrow them.

My mother also loves the color pink. Pink dishes, pink roses, pink fingernail polish and of course—pink shoes. It’s her signature color and I must say it’s one of my personal favorites too. We have even been known to go into a store and unknowingly buy the same pink sweater.

My mom also loves chocolate, cats, seashells, summertime and pocket books. She is the most organized person I know. She keeps a meticulous filing system for everything from recipes to taxes. She loves to sew and can work a jigsaw puzzle within hours.

Although there are thirty-five years between us, the older I get the more I realize I’m becoming just like her. Aside from the sewing and the puzzle working—which are things my sister favors—I’m already there.

I remember clearly how one day not long after I married, I was cleaning and my husband was standing nearby. “You sound like your mother,” he said.

I stopped while holding the rag and looked at him. “How do I sound like my mother? I wasn’t even speaking.”

“It’s the way you’re breathing—the way you exhale when you’re stressed. Your mother does the same thing. You sound just like her.”

Of course I denied such nonsense and sighed again to prove his point. What I didn’t want to say was that while the teenager inside of me was screaming in denial, I knew in my heart he was right. I am very much my mother.

Since that day my husband so kindly pointed out just one of my inborn tendencies, I’ve mentally tried to prepare myself for what time will more than likely do to me. Years later, however, I’ve discovered that I still don’t have a handle on this, but also that it really doesn’t matter. There have been many instances through the years that point out I’m not the only one who is changing.

One day I went as far as to ask my husband if he could envision his father being married to my mother in the not so distant future.

“Uh, no. I can’t,” Chad said. “Why would you ask such a crazy question?”

“Well, in about thirty years it’s going to happen. I may be turning into my mother but you, my dear, are turning into your father.” I got a very solemn look much like the one I’d given him years earlier, but I know he can see it too. We’re turning into our parents.

If this is inevitable, what is the best thing we can do with our newfound knowledge? I know what I need to do but can’t find the guts to put into motion. I need to ask this older version of myself some questions. Some heart-wrenching questions while I still have the chance.

For starters, I need to know where she found the strength to put her last baby on the school bus to attend the first day of kindergarten. And when she realized the house was quiet for the first time in years, did she smile with joy or did she cry in sorrow?

I need to know how she wiped noses, colored pictures and bandaged boo boos until they turned into broken hearts, big hair and bad grades. How did she find time for herself when she never missed a game, never failed to cook supper and how did she still have enough sense about her at the end of the day to help with eight-grade algebra? More importantly, how did she handle watching the children she nurtured and loved make bad choices and proudly stand in defiance during their teenage years? What is it like to have a voice that isn’t welcomed or heard by those you love the most?

I would also like to know what makes a marriage work after forty some years. Is it the same thing that makes it work after only ten? Does she ever think about what life was like before Dad came along? Does she wish she could have done anything differently? Gone to school or made a career instead of staying home and raising three children?

And lastly, the one thing I would ask above all the others but will likely never find the courage to ask is how did she get through losing my Mamaw—her mother. How did she tend for and then bury the woman who spent a lifetime raising and loving her? And how am I to one day live without the woman who still knows the perfect shade to buy, what to do to bring a smile and is the one who never fails to make my favorite chocolate ice cream pies on every birthday?

All these questions are things I could ask a dozen or so women in my life and get an answer for, yet there is only one answer I really want and need to hear. It’s the answer that would be given in the voice of my mother. Hers is the voice that’s laced with heredity, the wisdom of experience and is always spoken in the resounding tone of love.