Happy Birthday Mama

Mama.. That word conjures up all kinds of warm memories for many but that is not my experience. My Mama wasn't home much when I was growing up. She came and went, came and went and did not show me much affection.

It left me with a strange feeling when she died, 40 years ago this year. I did not cry. I didn't know who she was. I had some memories of her coming home to stay a few days and making sugar cookies or bread pudding. Of her gathering herbs and poke salad to make with eggs but so much of that time is just lost to me. I did not have her affection and so I shut down inside. I remember trying really hard when she would come home. I would fix her hair, tell her how pretty she was but It did not garner me any closeness from her.

I think I will always feel that loss but a friend of mine told me that she did the best she could considering the strain and disconnect she endured in her own life, and I finally got that when I grew up.

It is the reason though, that I revere Moms. The reason why I wanted to be a good one and I did half way succeed in that, which is a miracle ,considering I had no role model and the magazines I read, "True Detective and True Romance" weren't real Mommy material.

Today would have been her 94th Birthday had she lived. She was so young when she died at 53 and her Mama before at 51 . She never really had time with her Mama either. She was 30 when her Mama died and I was 25. She had been married since she was 16 and I had been married since I was 17. She had 14 years with her Mom and I had much less than half that with her. I always wonder how much those that went before influenced the way our lives are set up to be.

I know that we have free will but some of that is just innate. You see it with twins separated at birth and when they find each other, they have married similar people, have the same car or home and the same job. Some of it is burrowed deep in our psyche and it comes out years later whether we realize it or not.

It is funny that although she did not show me that she loved me, I am sure that she did. I understand her motives better now and forgive any slight I may have felt growing up. I see what a hard life she had as a girl of 13 being given to a man of 25. They "dated" for 3 years before they married, but that is an old man for a young girl of 16 to be married too. She never had a childhood, so how could she know that I would need one?

One day when this life is o'er I will be there with you both and there will be no pain as we see each other in true love, for the first time.

Happy Birthday Mama. I know that your life is heaven is far better than the one you were dealt on Earth. I know that you and Daddy are together still, because I have seen it. I know that you did the best you could and I know that, because I did the best that I could.

I love you Mama and Daddy... You lil ole gal, Glorann....