I Saw My Mother Today ....

Let me begin by saying this: not everybody comes from a mother who showed them love. Some of us come from mothers who are drug addicts or prostitutes or teenagers or hateful or murderers. There are all kinds of mothers out here in this world. That said ...

I saw my mother today. It's been 14 months since the last time I saw her. We saw each other last summer when my child was in the hospital.

You're probably wondering what category my mother falls into. Well, she falls into the hateful category. Everyone of us has good and bad in our make-up. Which side of ourselves we choose to live on is up to us. My mother has always felt that as the fifth and last child born in an extremely poor family, she was given life's short end of the stick. In other words, she felt gypped.

In that poor family all kinds of bad things happened to her. So she decided that since her life was so jacked up, it seemed only fair to jack up life for some other people. She saw the world as a place where you either rob or get robbed.

She laid eyes on my father and robbed him from his mother, who hated my mother until the day she died. I won't go into all the reasons they were wrong for each other except to mention that at the time he was a 19 year old schnook and she was a 23 year old single mother of two school age children had with two different fathers. They would bring out the worst in each other for the next 25 years. They were abbettors in evil. Today, thankfully, they are divorced.

I have no relationship with my mother. I cut her out of my life. For a long time I hung in there, figuring that there was some rule written in stone about sticking by your own mother no matter what. But thankfully, I figured out, sooner rather than later, that was nonsense. Evil is evil. And you either stand for it or you stand against it.

Soooo ..... I saw my mother today. She was perched in her spot next to the window at the front of her house. You know that nosy neighbor whose curtain moves every time there's activity outside their home? Since we were kids, growing up, everyone in our neighborhood knew this was our mother. Only, the window was curtainless. My mother didn't care if you saw her staring.

The spouse and I drove up to my mother's house to drop off our college-aged daughter, leaving her to continue her summer stay with my mother following a visit home with us. We all piled out of the car and helped her unload her few things. We chatted for a few minutes, all the while my mother watched from her perch.

We hugged our daughter good-bye, and as she walked towards the house, my mother opened her window and barked my name. Yes, barked! Her voice was gutteral, loud, bass-laidened. "Come inside!" she called. "Your Aunt So and So is here from overseas and wants to say hi!"

I didn't even raise my head in her direction. Instead, I turned my back to her, waved and called out. "Another time, we're in a hurry." We got into our car and drove away.

Five years ago I would have kowtowed to her command, so hungry was I for her love.

But life is short and it is precious. God presents his gift of life to each of us in puzzle pieces, over time. Our job is to put it all together in the lifetime that we're given. As a child my mother never once held me in a warm embrace, she never said the words "I love you," and her only touch was either accidental or violent.

And yet, my assembling puzzle is beautiful: two gorgeous and brilliant daughters, one amazing and wonderful spouse, the best in-laws, a well-meaning ex-spouse, whose in-laws I'll always consider as my family, and so much more that I can name.

So yeah, I saw my mother today. And yes, with a blind wave of a back hand, I passed her by as I would an insolent teenager in a schoolyard.

Eyes wide open, I can see clearly now.