Becoming My Mother

My mother, Linnie, Maelin, and myself. Maelin was 6 months old.


A few months after my mother died at the age of 60, two years ago, a strange thing happened. I was having a very hard time paying the bills that month and was trying to distract myself by cleaning out my closet. I came across the bag of "things" I had collected and saved from her funeral: cards, letters of sympathy from her friends, the guest book, pictures, and some odds and ends from her desk at work. I decided to take a few minutes and quickly sift through the items and as I did, over $500 in cash, checks, and gift cards fell out from the other teachers at my school. They had taken up a collection for me because they knew that because I was in MN at my mother's side for so long, I would use up all my sick leave and consequently be very short on cash. They had given it to me promptly when I returned, but in my grief at finding myself motherless at the age of 35, I had stuffed it away and forgotten about it.

I am NOT spiritual any longer and I have never really thought that Mom is "around" or trying to send me messages, but a chill went down my spine. It was clear to me that Linnie was trying to send me a message through that money: a message that she wasn't very far away and to know she was close by.

Just a few weeks ago, I was home alone and watching "The Black Stallion" which was always one of Linnie's favorite movies. She and I would stay up late throughout my entire childhood watching and rewatching that movie. We would cheer for the horse at the end and it never failed to produce a tear in my eye. When I was watching it alone for the first time in 20 years, I received that same chill. You can call me crazy, but I would SWEAR to you that I could look over at the empty chair in my living room and see my mom. She was there watching it with me. Not only that: she gave me a very clear message to pass along to my siblings. She told me to tell them that she was fine. She was happy and peaceful. She was proud of all of us. She loved us. Most of all...she was still here.

I called my siblings in tears that night and relayed her message. They quietly accepted this as truth as they've experienced their own "messages" from Linnie. From her preference to chili rellenos, to burnt popcorn, to extra bacon on a BLT, to the mini-series "Lonesome Dove" being the best series of all time: they've felt her as well. As for me...I know Linnie is near by; I hear her all the time. It isn’t her voice, though it’s mine. We just sound alike. As I talk to Maelin, especially, she suddenly pops up.

When my patience is really at its end, I borrow those words I always promised never to say; “Because I said so." When I tell Maelin to turn the tv off and go read, to stand up straight, to hold her drink with both hands so she doesn't spill, to drink milk with dinner and take your vitamins, to hurry up because we are going to be late, Linnie is right there smiling at me. Or maybe that’s just what we mom's say. I don’t know, but it sounds awfully familiar.

My mother was always the last to go to bed and the main breadwinner in our family. Busy, busy – always being the backbone and keeping us together. I remember incidents where she would pull heaven and earth to keep the electricity turned on and we would make frantic trips down to the office to beat the 6pm payment deadline. As I sometimes linger in the kitchen late at night, thinking about how proud I am of the fact that as a single mother, my child is safe, warm, fed, and snugly asleep upstairs in her bed, I wonder if my mother also stayed awake with the same thoughts.

I remember long, hot, boring days in the summer when we kids were melting in the heat and dying from boredom. She would patiently offer up one possible entertainment after another. From collecting frogs in the backyard, to building a clubhouse in the nearby field, her ideas were always riddled with creativity and the desire to keep us active. Turns out that’s a pretty useful technique. I find myself constantly shuttling Maelin around from the park to the zoo to the mud river we created in our backyard with the hose and a shovel. I see her smile as I scrub Maelin in the bath to get the dirt out of her ears.

With quiet determination, my mother would save and scrimp and work 16 hour days to save for the trips to Disneyland that she was so set on having be a part of our childhood. We would pile into our car with nothing but a bag of sandwiches and Kool-Aid for the car ride (we were not allowed soda, which is a rule in my house as well), and The Everley Brothers playing out on the stereo. We would sing along to the tape over and over again, practicing our harmony, while Colorado, then Utah, then Nevada landscape flew by. Eventually, we would pull into the Best Western next door to Disneyland in a heap of excitement where we would spend the next 7 straight days at the Happiest Place on Earth. We always had to ride the Peter Pan ride first. It was a Disneyland rule. Funnily enough...Maelin and I booked our 3rd trip to Disneyland this fall. She's only 5 and although has never driven the drive across Colorado, Utah, and Nevada to get there, this will be her third trip. We will march across the park to start our visit off at the only place that I could imagine: the Peter Pan ride.

Those trips must have been exhausting. Not only did my mom do all the packing, planning, saving, and make all the arrangements – she also of course did all the driving. I can only remember my dad coming along on one trip, and the rest of the time it was just how she liked it...just her and her kids.

It was, finally, dealing with the impossible amount of friends and life-time loves that she had that drives my mother out of my league. Upon her untimely death, people arose out of the woodwork that I had never heard of before. She had apparently made another family out of these people that cried with us, who brought us meals, who cared about us like we were their own children, who still send me letters and emails so that I know they are out there caring about us. Thinking about us. Linnie's spirit had touched them so much and they came in droves to show us. I was, and continually am, humbled by the amount of people whom she touched. Who remembered her smile and her ability to make you feel so special.

My mother was an impressive and accomplished businesswoman, made killer meatballs, knew Little House on the Prairie books by heart, collected all of the Classic Illustrated Junior Comic Books from the 50's, and could bathe 4 children, answer a business call, and stir her homemade spaghetti sauce at the same time without hesitation. I’m behind on most of those skills, and not even close on cooking meatballs. However, I think I’m keeping up on what was best about her. At all times, and in every way, no matter how small the hurt or how much I had disappointed her, she was there for us. As I today hug and love my little girl, I hope that she feels the same. I wonder if someday, Maelin too, will wonder if she has become me.