Never get into a thumb war with death. Death has really, really long thumbs.

It’s all death. PIRATES! Death. PIRATES! Death. LIPGLOSS! Death. TODDLER ROOT CANALS! Death. A POX ON LEAPSTERS! Death. SLUG SANDWICHES! Death.

I keep thinking I should break the pattern. You know. Write about circumcision. Or those wacky attachment parents. Or how vegetarianism is the handshake drug of complete moral breakdown.

But death is here again. It keeps asking, sheepishly, for fresh tea. It drinks half, then misplaces the mug. The bottom half always cools.

+++

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, rattled. A roller coaster with bright orange rails. A row of empty cars except for the front one, which arrives at the endstation with Evan on the left-hand side, screaming hysterically.

Where is Ben? My god! Where is Ben?

He fell out! He fell out!

The tape rewinds like in an editing suite. It makes that zipzipzip rewind sound. And again the cars arrive with Evan wailing, and a blank space where Ben had been. Horror. Horror. Horror.

Motherhood makes you nuts.

+++

Kate:  I’m not afraid of you, you know.

Death:  I know.

Kate:  I’ve seen you before.

Death:  I know.

Kate:  I just don’t like it when you hang around my family.

Death:  Not many people do.

Kate:  You’re just so damned arbitrary.

Death:  Am not.

Kate:  Are too.

Death:  Am not.

Kate:  Oh christ. Stop that.

Death:  Oh christ. Stop that.

Kate:  Quit copying me!

Death:  Quit copying me!

Kate: (glares)

Death: (snickers)

Kate:  You’re like that miserable jerk who hands out parking tickets all day. Isn’t that, like, totally toxic? Again and again you ruin days, every day. Is that really how you want to spend your life?

Death:  (pauses, confused)

+++

On the way to the hospital I stop for flowers and sushi, the same place as always. I glance across to the table by the window and I see me there, pregnant with Evan and staring terrified at a newborn in someone else's stroller. Zip ahead. It is my newborn, my stroller. Zip ahead. I am newly unpregnant with Liam and Ben, walking through those doors in a daze.

"Congratulations!" the woman says. "When are you due?"

Betrayal by empire waist.

"I'm not pregnant," I am too tired to be merciful. "I had twins a month ago. My babies are in the hospital."

Zip ahead. I scan the case and choose swedish meatballs, chickpea salad, a block of mac and cheese, strawberries, yop. I bring them to my grandmother's apartment and lay out a plate for her, then for Evan and Ben.

"Oh!" she says, watching me change Ben. "I haven't seen him since he was a baby."

We saw you last week. I smile. "It's been a long time, Gram."

Nothing has ever been so good as this Fentiman's Victorian Lemonade. I sip and grimace. Victorians were sour. I don't think I like it. I sip again, and grimace again. Victorians were sour. I sip again.

I look across the atrium at other people and feel more gently towards them than I have in the past. Instead of cruel obliviousness I see, right there, twenty-three journeys. Twenty-three burdens of fear and defiance, each of them different and identical.

I leave a little in the bottle, a beer drinker's habit. I start off for palliative care and imagine wearing a radioactive suit that makes me invisible to the hospital's insatiability. It's not about me or my history. I am there to sit with my grandmother. But still. To abide with someone in their death is to abide with yourself in your own.

+++

I wonder if she can see the clock. I hope not. I don't like the way that clock stares at her. But I do appreciate how it reminds my mother to pass the honour of mothering her mother to the nurses. That she should go home to her kitchen to stir something that smells delicious, to smile through glass as cloud biscuits rise.

Cloud biscuits will always rise. They make home into home, a warm and buttery scent that embraces you the moment you walk through the back door. Cloud biscuits are my mother.

+++

I stroke her hand and tell her she doesn't need to stay awake. I'm not going anywhere, Gram.

She sleeps, heavy but haunted. I wonder what she sees. She answers, her eyes fluttering open.

"They're dancing in Italy. They're dancing in the streets."

"Are you wearing a pretty dress, Gram?"

"Oh, of course."

And she is away again.

+++

Please don't express condolences. It doesn't feel quite right. I'm sad, and we all are. She's the last of four grandparents, all of whom were fixtures my whole life. We can only hope to have such a life as she has, both in length and quality. Death is work, and waiting, staring at clocks, and replaying all we might have done.

Please do this instead. Tell me memories of your mothers. Doesn't matter if they're still here, or if they're estranged. Tell me stories of ghosts and cloud biscuits. Tell me the opposite of arbitrary. Tell me what you'll always remember so that I'll know, and my mother too, that motherhood, as nutty as it makes us, endures through everything.

Even death.

Comments

[Hannah]

OK, I won't say the usual meaningless words. They don't help at a time like this anyway.

**

I've never written about my mom. I don't think I'm a good enough writer yet. So I'll just tell you this about her; she wears horrible sweaters with loud colours and crazy designs on them. She painted her living room and her kitchen red. She believes in elves and fairies. She's the toughest person I know. She laughs with her whole body. For my 30th birthday, she wrote a list of 30 things she likes about me.

She's still young. I hope I have her around for years and years. I will be bereft when she is gone.

[Maria]

She doesn't know I'm watching as she lifts the baby and places him in his brother's lap and guides them down the backyard slide again and again. They giggle together and the wind blows her long blond hair.

She'll always be 15-years-old to me. At least when no one is watching. She is loving, vulnerable, kind.

(When I need my mother she is a grown up, she is strong. I need her to tell me I'm doing things okay.)

But all the other times? She is an Innocent, a woman who speaks to animals in a girl's voice, who cries for lost cats and memorizes the flight paths that leave contrails across the wide blue sky above her back yard.

One time we stood on her dock and drank beers together and watched an air show across the bay. The planes were tiny from where we stood until one rocketed out of nowhere, crossing right above us. We whooped and yelled and jumped together, waving our arms as the sound of the jet engine echoed and snarled and fizzled, leaving us with our laughter.

[Zak]

Heart breaking and lovely, all at the same time.

[mommymae]

i wrote about my own grandmother in january. she is the last of my 4 grandparents (and 4 great grands) that i grew up with. she is my hero.

http://mommymae.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/oh-maw-maw-betty-a-series-of-posts-highlighting-old-family-photos-and-the-stories-they-tell/

a little more of her story is in the next post about my grandpa.

http://mommymae.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/grandpa-freda-series-of-posts-highlighting-old-family-photos-and-the-stories-they-tell/

sorry i didn't follow the rules and write about my mom. i was drawn to tell you about my beautiful grandma betty.

[erin]

she is a gypsy...and together we create adventures to random places. we dine on feasts of grapes and cheese, crackers and diet pepsi my papa has packed for us.
we drive with the windows down, music blaring. singing and dancing...
when we're sick of the music, we let the road pass us by... throw random rhyming words at each other for the other to complete..

..it's hot in the summer, we're both wearing long skirts- she turns on the air conditioning and tells me to put my feet up on the dash board. we sit there for a few minutes, letting the cool breeze blow up our skirts, giggling at ourselves.

she is a ya-ya sister, and i've always been able to be in her sisterhood.

breaking me out of school or work or... whatever my jail may be- to have an adventure together.. to eat greasy burgers on the bed and nap in the afternoon with a movie on.

i was always transfixed with her body, one that she never hid from me. deep ribbon scars on her belly from all three of us... soft curves that always held and comforted.. breasts that sag, and hips that carry life.
i stand at the stove now, stirring a pot of whatever it is to be dinner, my butt and breasts shake. i imagine my hips look wide from behind... and i all of a sudden feel like her... feel like, i am her body... i am her daughter.. i am going to be a mother- and my babies will know me in the same ways.. and i can't help but smile.

even if we argue over the stupidest things... and she has to have the last word. and she slams doors like no other, opens them again. opens your door. slams it. and then slams hers again...
she is home.

[heather]

I'm seven or eight siting on our kitchen floor with a paper bag (remember those?) cut open and spread out before me and a huge pile of apples and the best apple peeler. That is always the first thing I think of when I think of my mom. and every time I bake. We peeled, we cored. We baked pies to eat. pies to share. pies for the freezer. so many damn pies.

love to you. My Gram was a "Gram" too. She always made me pink applesauce.

[Cindy]

My mother is babylost, too, although her "baby" was 46 when she died. Mom still goes to the cemetary every day to see her and talk to her. She even gets up early on Sunday to go. I don't have children, so I can't even imagine how she's feeling. But you are so eloquent I can get a glimpse. Thank you for that.

[her bad mother]

I have nightmares, about losing my mom, about losing my mom after losing my dad and being left, alone, without them, an orphan, my longest and most deeply held fear. I have nightmares, about fighting with Death, about begging him to stay away.

I'm sorry. I wanted to say something lovely, about my mom's belly laugh and her twinkling eyes and her perverse imagination that conjures alligators in closets for my daughter to hunt and her ability to bake a lemon cake, right on the spot, just because you asked. But I've been having nightmares.

[janet]

My mother is a baby-lover, a constant worrier, an awesome pie-baker, a feral protector, a loyal friend, a for-gawd's-sake-put-some-lipstick-on advisor.

I remember a bully pushing me into a snowbank and pounding me on the back when I was walking home alone at the age of 9 or so. I burst into the house, sobbing and fell into her arms. We didn't tell my dad, who is a feral protector in his own right. Instead, my mother walked to meet me the next day. And she found the bully and got right in his face, wagging her finger, admonishing. I think she swore (she never swears). Then she took my hand, walked me home and fed me cookies and milk.

That bully never bothered me again.

[Melissa @MBonn]

My grandmother died when I was just over a year old. I have none of "my own" memories of her but I know so much of her that I feel like I do. I know that when she passed away, my mother had to buy me a real bed even though I was only a year old because I had slept in my grandmother's bed my whole life and thought a crib was for play time. I think of her whenever I see or hear the Little Drummer Boy because that was her favorite carol. My cousin and I both have her names as our middle names, and we wear them proudly. I hear from everyone how she could make you shut up with just a look and how she was loving but she was also a bit of a hard ass. And when I see these traits in my mother I know where they've come from. And when I see them in myself, I know where they've gone. She may not have been alive for it, but she certainly played a huge role in raising me.

[Tracy (Tiny Mantras)]

In recent months, I've been scanning scads of pictures of the grandparent I lost last - my maternal grandma - who passed in 2004. For the first time, I've been examining her face when it was so young and handsome. I see her hanging with her sorority sisters, wearing a necklace my mother digs out of a chest so we can somehow touch that time.

Then she's in some strange newspaper article with young women and cats, promoting some 1930s self-help guru's idea that women should "learn to move with feline grace." Then she's standing in front of a group of kids who look like they came straight out of "Angels with Dirty Faces" to whom she taught English for two years, before she became the wife of a doctor and mother of five.

She and my granddad are in a keepsake picture from their date at some dinner theater in Cleveland. I see her in the hospital bed, having put on her lipstick and jewlery to pose with her second-born, my mom. I see the bags under her eyes - the same ones I have - in pictures of her with her kids at various ages. I found some saucy poems she wrote for my granddad, too. (Possibly one of the secrets to their 60+ years of marriage.)

She was so much more than the woman I knew. My always worried, singing, loving grandmamommy. I revel in her mysteries.

[misty]

Grammy had a kitchen island in her house. With old hard metal legged stools. The men were out in the barn playing with grease. We were inside baking cookies. "Use the back of the spoon, it mixes better, batter sticks on the front". I always mixed cookies with the back of the wooded spoon.
Cards, she taught me how to play cards. Right down to banging knuckles on the table when you play. She always kept the score.

Mom is a believer. In me. In everything. She is very frustrating. We are too much alike.

[Sheri]

so beautiful, kate, these words. and they feel like perfect timing. for awhile now, i've been wanting to write down my feelings about the few weeks in which my grandmother died. it is work. but it was also such a gift to be along for her ride away. so this will be my story for today.

[René]

My mom grew up as one of seven kids in a poor Mennonite family. They lived in the flattest, driest part of Saskatchewan. Each Christmas my grandparents would make them one toy each, and they would also get one orange each. One toy, one orange. So precious that the peels were always eaten too.

Mom has often mentioned that one orange a year, usually over breakfast dishes strewn with toast crumbs and orange peels.

When Mom was thirteen, her family moved to a dairy farm in the Okanagan, surrounded by orchards: plums, apples, cherries, apricots. She says that her father felt like they had moved to paradise, and that for years her mother canned every single piece of fruit that fell to the ground. They could barely keep up with all of the abundance. Fruityfantastica!

I'm sending you an imaginary fruit basket. It has plums, apples, cherries, and apricots in it. And one orange.

And a mango, from my dear dad, who always told the most amazing stories about his childhood when he ate a slice of mango. But that's another story.

[thordora]

You give her dying such beauty and dignity.

My mother was a thief. I'm reminded when I'm in the grocery store with Ros, and she snakes her little arm out for a grape, a piece of bagel, chips, goldfish, and I tell her no, not until we paid and I suddenly see my mother, pillaging the chocolate pastilles in the bulk corner, her finger held to her lips as she smirked (my classic, graceful mother smirking? A sight to behold) and told me it didn't count since she needed to test them before we bought them. She's lay one single, white piece in my palm and tell me to eat it as I stood, paralyzed, knowing it was technically wrong, but sweetened by my staunch mother breaking a rule.

Her thievery was so very juicy.

Peace to your Nan. And you.

[sweetsalty kate]

You're all wonderful. Basking in you and your mothers.

And René - where exactly is the flattest, driest part of Saskatchewan? I have to know. There are pirates there, but it's hard to know if I've got the description right from google maps. Hah! Rubbing palms. I will be consulting/ambushing you for prairie fact-checking with an early manuscript.

And tiny mantras Tracy, I love the idea of touching time. That was nicely put.

[Terri]

holy sh*t. what a blog. your words move me.

my mom runs marathons, now. what i remember as a kid was that she wanted to sing and dance on stage, but became a mother instead. sang in church, instead. i remember something, the strangest thing. some sound that i can't explain, but can only assume was the sound of her talking when i was in utero. i've never told her that. i think i will today.

[leslie]

Kate, oh the words, your way of weaving them...
you stop me right where I am - BOOM, silence.
And then a gush of so many feelings within.
You weave magic, no matter the subject.
I should comment more, tell you this more.
So I am. Right now.

My mother...
"Never leave the house without lipstick."
"Get back on the horse!"
"You can do anything you set your mind to."
She started her dream career when she was 39 (she designs/builds houses).
So did I (I take photos and people pay me for it :).
She never cries.
I cry a lot (maybe even a little right now).
She is short and as we grew taller than her she would puff up and say "Just you remember - little but mighty!" and it's true.
She is.

[EarnestGirl]

streaming warm wet unexpected tears. you unlocked something i've kept from myself. I have to go do this difficult thing, this last winding of a clock for my grandmother because hers is winding down, and it is - as your post has made me realize - making me miss my mother so terribly. caught up in the practicalities, the just needing to cope, i have not sat down to this particular cup of tea.

your tags say it all - truth and despair.

thanks for the truth.

can i get back to you about the despair?

[Ariel]

My mum just moved to Oregon. She left my stepfather of 20 years and all of us kids except for the youngest who is 15. She took him.
The thing is- I'm so proud of my mother I could BURST! She is amazing! When my brother died 9 years ago she quit everything and went back to school. My dad and my older sister were mad because she was making a lot of money doing what she was doing but she was unhappy.
She graduated with honors! And a double major.
My dad is mad she left because he doesn't understand how she can throw way 20 years. My sister is mad because she thinks my mom should still be caring for her. My other sisters feel betrayed because they needed her!
I told her to leave. She's lived her whole life for us, always taken care of us and she didn't want to die like my grandma died, bitter because she never lived for herself.
I'm PROUD of her for leaving, for saying the next 20 years are going to be MINE!

[Jett]

I was six months along with my own firstborn (I am my mother's) when it happened like this: My husband, due to the nature of his job in the military, had been called out on alert. I had been turning back the covers alone for five nights when the sixth morning found me shooting upright in my bed, sobbing. Please know that I have never been the person quick to tears, much less the one allowing my whole body cry with me.

I found the phone, made it break across a continent-breadth of distance into my mother's late morning.

"Mom...." She could hear the wail building in my voice and immediately began to laugh. Pregnancy had pounded me into a caricature of hormone-soaked dramatics over and over again ("What do you meeeean my belly button will start protruding, ahhhhh, waaaaahhhhh."); despite the fifty cents per minute charge, I made a beeline for my mother telephonically each time I had a come-apart.

"No, mother, it's not funny this time," I said into the receiver, "I had a dream that you died. I was standing there at the edge of your grave, holding my son's hand and all I could think was that I couldn't survive the missing of you, that I wanted to kiss my boy and then get down there and lie on top of your coffin and stay there so as not to lose you completely."

She was quiet, reverent in the face of my future grief.

And then, chest racked with sobs, I was barely able to tell her, "I mean, I always knew you'd die someday, but I never REALIZED it. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to do this, to pick up the phone and hear you. That dream was just so real, mother."

She waited a few beats, allowing me to cry through the worst of it, before quietly saying, "Elizabeth, listen to me.

"Your whole lives I've tried to equip you kids for any contingency. I've raised you up to take care of yourselves and one another. I've always made it clear to y'all that I am not going to be here forever, so I am living like I mean it while I am. And let me tell you girl, when I consider each of my children I don't believe for one second that you'll be the one to falter or be adrift, with me or without me." She was just so gentle with me.

She is the most amazing thing, my mother. When I pause to think of her as a person independent of me rather than just 'momma', she steals my breath. She is beautiful and expansive, compassionate and whip-smart and funny. She had the forethought to tell my father before they were married, "Listen, if you ever hit me, I'll wait until after you go to bed and I'll pour hot grease in your ear." I think that is the most hilarious thing a woman has ever said to a man in the history of Always.

[Jess]

My dad's mum, my grandmother, danced in the kitchen:
http://www.windowledgearts.com/2009/03/dance.html
Now she is gone. They all are.

I stole a flat round mother of pearl button from her danish butter cookie tin.

[AW]

My mom has trouble connecting with people, so she bakes pies and gives them out instead. She doesn't mention that it's the thing that she knows how to do best, but people who are paying attention can tell. She has a special freezer where she keeps a collection of fresh picked fruits and homemade frozen piecrusts, and when she's talked on the phone too long she'll say, "I need to grab that pie from the oven," and then she's gone.

We haven't ever really gotten along, but she loves me. Even though I've been out of college for more than a handful of years, she is always ready to drive me somewhere or pick me up when I've been stranded. At 28 there was a public transportation issue and I found myself calling my mother to rescue me at 3 am. When we got back to her house she said, "There's pie in the fridge" before she went back to bed.

[steph]

My mother makes me so crazy that my IBS kicks it up a notch. But I love her so much that I told her she's not allowed to die. Ever.

Can I have that cloud biscuit recipe, please?

[Mad]

Random: my mother puts a pot of soup on for supper. She goes back to the living room and drops dead of a stroke. My 6-yr-old nephews come by for a sleep-over a couple of hours later and watch as their dad and some firefighters break down the door to find her house almost in flames and her dead body on the pull-out couch.

Random: the telephone call to me in Edmonton that tells me I am an orphan. I am 34. The jagged knife that rips away that bond between mother and daughter. The tears that I still cry.

Memory: A red head whose hair faded into pale peach, an apple doll face, a waist large enough for my adult arms just to fit around it, hands that were always in motion. Kindness, shyness and the ability to bear God's own grudge, all in equal measure. A love of Perry Como, C.S. Lewis and Mr Bean. Rocking chairs and jigsaw puzzles. The strength to lose a husband (and a brother) to cancer and to raise 6 children on her own. The frailty to be mentally and physically broken in the process. The love that to this day is bigger than anything I have known.

Random: The great thumb wrestler takes a startling proportion of my family in their prime: a grandfather to appendicitis in 1933, leaving his pregnant wife to raise 3 children during the depression. A father to cancer at 48. An uncle to cancer in his 40s too, also with 6 children still to raise. The remaining three grandparents gone by the time I am in my twenties. A nephew who is only able to claim 3 days of mortality. A 3-yr-old niece who fights the bastard and wins--I had hoped she broke one of his thumbs.

Random: the bastard hates my husband too. He takes both his parents within 3 years of my mother's death, a father to a sudden, fatal heart attack, a mother to ovarian cancer, and then a beloved aunt less than a year later. Death, he thinks he's funny: my father-in-law has his heart attack and drops dead in the town dump in -30 degree weather. His wife goes looking for him and finds him dead in the dump. Ha, ha, Death.

Random: a call from a sister. An unexplained mass in the abdomen. Pain, weight loss, severe anemia. A biopsy today. The first person I ever worshiped, the last person I fought with, the fragile voice on the phone last night. A family that's been kicked in the gut too many times by that mean, ole Death to dare place hope in anything.

Memory: Feral fighting as children. Feral love as adults. 6 children joined by love and loss, all not wanting to exhale just yet.

Random: my closest friend and confidante walks into my office 2 days ago. Her mother has melanoma with a bleak prognosis. Her mother is a few months older than mine was when she died. We both cry. We both wait.

_______________
I know this is not what you asked for Kate, but I don't blog any more and this has been overflowing inside of me. Thank you for the space to say it.

[Mary]

I was five. I clung to her leg after my father furiously crushed all the toys I left out on the floor. We were scared together. I clung to her again five and a half years ago, again because of his rage. I'm glad I inherited her thick thighs and not his boiling point.

You make words sing.

[Jessica]

My mother is tiny, standing only four feet, nine and a half inches. She's fiercely proud of that half-inch. Her spirit is big and open, naive to a fault. She gives herself away until she's depleted, and then looks through cupboards and dresser drawers to see what else she might offer. She lives by faith, flawed and flawless at the same time. She became a different version of herself when her own mother died - melancholy joy, if there is such a thing. She looks at me and sees both her first-born, still a little a girl, and a young woman full of promise and possibilities. She is proud of me before I accomplish anything; prouder still when I fail and try again.
She was home with us when we were small. She made all of my dresses until I was in high school, made my gown for the day I married. She baked our bread, 5 loaves at a time, and chocolate-chip cookies in double-batches. She produced meals and clothes and projects and a home. Every recipe and pattern from scratch and always made with love first.
She stands at my dad's side, the ever-loyal companion. She works at her marriage and teaches me to do the same.
She is the friend who puts a pot of coffee on for comfort or for celebration or just because. There is always coffee brewing and being poured. She likes hers black, but understands that I prefer mine with sweet cream. She keeps the cream in case I stop for a visit. She likes to be prepared.
My mom is a grandmother now, a role she cherishes. She wants to hold the kids, grimaces when lifting them causes her pain. She lifts them anyway. She looks for ways to make them feel special. Her doting is effortless.
There are still days that I just want my mom. I want to sit with her, talk with her, feel her precious hugs, hide from the rest of the world. I want to be her girl. She allows it and I am grateful.

[Amy]

Even during the worst of it, when she was curled tightly into a corner murmuring numbers and fluttering scraps of paper through her fingers, her face twisted by paranoia ... I'd hidden her cell phone and unplugged her ethernet cable in a desperate effort to keep her self-destruction contained -- no more emails to the mayor, mom ... even then, as she raged inside the black devastation of her own grief, searching for patterns where there were none, messages where there were none, some meaning to make sense of her crushed life -- she could rise up for me.

She could see my tears, and her eyes would steady, her voice would come through clear. "Listen to me. It's going to be okay."

[mnkathy]

I've never written anything about my mother. It's too painful. I have no associations of her with things like cloud biscuits or "mothering" and I'm insanely jealous of those who have that with their own. My mother is self absorbed and narcissistic. My grandmother, on the other hand, was my rock. I lost her 2 1/2 years ago. She was my mother. She was mac and cheese and hugs and kisses and love to my children. Oh, how I miss her...

I was with my great grandmother while she lay dying in a hospital bed (my father and grandfather, too along with other countless, nameless people--I am a nurse and have been tagged the "Death Angel" by many a coworker). My great grandmother was 99 1/2 years old when she died. Condolences were useless and the words "I'm so sorry" used to piss me off like no other. It was just such a wrong emotion for her. I get it.

Thank you for this post. In a weird way, it made me smile and understand some stuff. I think it was the title. :) Take care, Kate.

[anne]

My grandma is technically my ex-step-grandma.

She turns 89 this month, and I visited her last month, and was so sad by how confused she was. She was ecstatic that I was coming, and bringing the children. But each day prior to the visit she called- sometimes to ask when we were coming, sometimes to ask why my name was on her calendar, was I coming to visit?

Because of her, I know how to make jam. I know the patience and agony of sitting for hours on the dock, pitting cherries to can them later. I know how to properly row a boat, and the importance of doing it properly. Efficiency, she stressed. Everything had to be done efficiently. She once made me paint a fence 3 times until I got the brush strokes right, and I was so angry and frustrated- but an expert fence painter.

[Amy S]

My Mom has always been a protector to my brother and me, but never overly so. Always putting her arm out in front of us if she had to stop the car fast, wrenching her back to try to keep us from falling, hugging us through our tears when the fall couldn't be stopped and we skinned or scraped or twisted something. The last few years this has changed-she has needed protecting because of knee replacements,and ankle surgeries, help getting up, help walking through the snow, a steadying hand. I'm 34 and two months ago I excitedly found out I was pregnant! Mom has become the protector again, feeding me healthy things at lunch, making sure I get naps and rest and even putting out her arm in front of me when she had to stop the car fast. I didn't know how much I missed this feeling.

[tash]

Kate, I just did this tango with my own grandmother last summer. And to know the shape and outline of the whole process, even though the circumstances could not have been more different (6 days vs. 89 years? Really?), didn't seem to help me feel any better. There was still handholding, and trying to tell garbled stories knowing there wasn't nearly enough time. Not knowing if she heard me, hoping she didn't feel too much pain, still having to sanitize my hands, and her hair was so, so soft. I could be speaking about either here.

I tried to comfort myself with the being there.

My grandmother was the worst cook ever. Seriously bad. My whole talk at her funeral was framed around bad food experiences, which my family found hilarious and poignant and I think her friends found rather rude. I know she would've chuckled through the whole thing. xo

[neena]

My grandmother used to take us to the park to feed the ducks that roamed the lake. She'd save bread, rolls, anything that would appeal to them. Once they were fed and our feed were fully soaked we'd walk up the hill to the rickety old swings where she'd proceed to have us sit on her lap, our legs outstretched behind her back and we'd pretend we were butterflies.

Always floating like butterflies - too excited to ever want to land.

Now I try to teach my children the beauty of floating like butterflies on the swings in our backyard.

[slouchy]

Oh, Kate. Your words, as always, so lovely. And Mad's, too.

I think I'll share memories of my grandmother:

Ode to My Grandmother on her 103rd Birthday

There's such a thing as too old,
There really is, you confided,
And I nodded, willingly enough.
(I did not believe, and you knew it.)
But I'm older, now, each day closer
To understanding, to sight.

I saw darkness fall, shuttering
Your sickly eyes, your waiting books.
You mourned them silently,
As was your way. A sigh here,
Another there, the breath
Barely audible. (I heard.)

All my friends are dead,
You announced, one morning
Over coffee, as sunlight striped
Photos of all the smiling grands
And greats. Then you made a choice:
You shook with mirth, and irony.

I adored you in that minute,
Your rueful crooked grin, your
Belief in the privacy of grief
Undimmed by age, by familiar pain,
Though you did place withered hands
On broken knees, and wince. (I saw.)

Once it was your gift to make a thing
From air, or dirt. You spun silk
Indoors before ten, outdoors at four.
I studied. Chagrined, I discovered
I hadn't inherited your skill or ease.
You forgave me then, and later.

You found an old typewriter, set me free.
Write a letter, to your dad,
You said, Or something else.
I chose else. Soon I thrust paper near
Your whirling form. You stopped to read.
Hmm, you offered, a little pleased.

Much later I found that poem,
If one could call it that,
Among my father's papers. You'd
Sent it on to him, that very day.
Dick, you'd scrawled,
This one likes her words.

The September night you lay dying,
I drove an unfamiliar route, just
So I might reach you in time. But
Nearly lost, I registered a voice,
My sister's, choked: I, you, hadn't made it.
I sobbed on the shoulder of I-78.

You were one hundred and one years old
When you died, too old for your liking,
But not, ever, for ours. Where you live now,
Can you be of use? I imagine you so.
I watch you wheel from this to that,
I watch your busy hands. They fly.

[hillary]

My mom tried for 7 years to have a baby. She was pregnant many times and lost many times. She had a wonky cervix, an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in the loss of an ovary, and so much heartbreak. She was strong, though, and fought through the pain to produce 4 babies who have all grown up to tower over her tiny 5'2"(And 3/4"! Don't forget the 3/4" or you will get The Look) frame. My mom believed in whole grains and the importance of dairy products and daily salads before it was hip. She appreciates the value of a handmade card. She took me out for a milkshake every single time I had to have a needle. She doesn't understand my discomfort with uneven numbers but she tries. She is deathly afraid of water but took all of us kids to swimming lessons every summer.

She fought for us and she is my hero.

[sweetsalty kate]

MNKathy - I think the word 'mother' is semantics, sometimes. You were mothered by your grandmother. And that's the same kind of memory and significance. I thought of that as I wrote this.... that there are plenty of people out there for whom the word 'mother' doesn't evoke much at all, if anything positive. But in those cases I'm thinking we find nurturing and mothering in all kinds of unexpected ways. I'm so glad you did.

It's not so much that I don't appreciate condolences, it's just that I didn't want to claim support that really should be given to my mother and my uncle. They're the ones who sit with her every day. She is their mother. I have grief for the loss of my grandmother, but they've known her for so much longer, and in such a more intimate way. And so as sad as I am, I would have felt uncomfortable with kind people sending love or soothing in my direction. I'm happy that everyone is sharing so generously. My mother will really enjoy reading all of this.

And Sue, you can be here anytime, rent-free. That was so beautiful and just... you reached into my chest and gave my guts a tweak. How I love the words 'feral' and 'love' next to one another. And I'm sorry your family and Len's has been so robbed over the years. I hope your niece broke the bastard's thumb, too. And am thinking of you and your sister, hoping she does, too. xo

I'm so rapt by all these stories. You're all so appreciated and so generous.

The recipe for my mom's Cloud Biscuits is here. I'll transcribe it now.

[Binkytown]

My grandmother was so lovely. So beautiful. She was delicate. I wish so much that she were here so I could ask her about motherhood and being sad. She worked in a hospital, maybe she was a volunteer, I'm not sure, but this was back in the days when you could hold the babies in the nursery without being a real RN. That's what she did there. She loved babies. She would hold them and rock them and love them because she couldn't not. I love to imagine that there are people walking around today, all over, that have her imprint on them and her love and don't even know it.

[beckkeen]

My father died of a heart attack when I was twelve. I was the only one who wasn’t home at the time. I was up the road babysitting, watching Rescue 911 when the ambulances came screaming by. Sitting there, watching the show, waiting for the parents to come home, listening to the stories of death on tv, I thought of how much I loved my family, my parents in particular. So I walked over to the phone and dialed my home number (even though the parents were about to walk in the door at any minute and I would be going home, about 20 houses away), I wanted to tell my Mum and Dad that I loved them. The phone was busy. It was my Mum calling the ambulance while my 13 year old sister did CPR on our Dad while my 10 year old brother watched. I hung up the phone, didn’t think anything of it, finished the tv show, and there was a knock on the door – which was weird because the parents were always home at the same time, and they still had about 10 minutes until I expected them home. I opened the door and it was my best friend and her Mom. I could see the ambulances down the street. They told me I should go home, that Ashley would babysit. I ran home (maybe 20 houses down the street), I ran by the parents of the kids I had been babysitting. I don’t remember what I said, but they would have seen the ambulances.
My Dad died that night. Pronounced dead at the hospital, but Mum said she could see it in his eyes when he let go. FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS, I felt like I had been the only one who didn’t get to say goodbye. It haunted and tormented me. (In retrospect, I am sort of glad that I don’t have images of watching him die like my Mum and bro and sister do.)
One night, years later, maybe 3 or 4, I was sound asleep and the most amazing thing happened. He came to see me. I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me too. Then he kissed me on my check and I could feel the stumble on his face. He was really there, and I can still feel what that scratchy stubble felt like. I woke up crying, relieved and so grateful for whatever it was in this world that can make those kinds of things happen (dead people visiting you).
I have felt him on and off over the years, mostly when I am alone, I can sometimes feel his presence. I know in my deepest of hearts, he brought me my daughter and gave her to me so safe and sound, and I hope and pray that he continues to protect her as she grows. There is something so wonderful and comforting about having guardian angels. It makes me feel warm and never alone and like I have a bit of an extra shield in this world.

[Natalie]

I'll share two stories:

1) I am blessed to have both of my grandmothers still in my life. My oldest grandmother is 94. She still lives independantly in an apartment. She still walks 1-2 kms a day (down from 3-4 just a couple of years back). I asked her recently what she had been up to and she answered "I spend most of my time helping take care of the OLD people". HAH

2) My other grandmother, whose mind is now long gone, used to tell me the best stories about my grandfather (now passed away). She had a mind full of glamour and detail and is the quintessential wartime bride. Their courtship lasted 3 months before a quicky marriage and they remained married 51 years until my grandfather passed away. She loved to tell the tale of how she met my grandfather, the pianist in a military big band, because he pointed her out in a crowd and asked to be introduced to the girl with the "best gams in the room". She was a knockout with black hair, ruby lips and green eyes. When she was still conscious of her surroundings, she would recall her life in romantic terms, always something special, always something beautiful and good. I often think of her attitude when I am feeling hard done by and fatigued. We could all use a bit more glamour on those kinds of days.

hugs to you...hope to see you soon.

[Lemon Gloria]

My mom is named Betty, and probably half the time I still call her Mama, and the other half Betty. She's been my best friend for a long, long time. When I was little, and five was the biggest number I knew, I would tell her I loved her, and she would ask, "How much? How much do you love me?" And I would spread my arms wide and say, "Five! I love you five!"

This is my best Betty story.

[Natalie]

PS - I know you asked about our mother's stories...but that's still a little raw for me so I spoke about my grandmothers. My own mother is still a bit too close to the edge. As you...I do not want condolences or pity...just a bit of space to process and figure things out. I know that in the garnd scheme of things that her life is unfolding as it is intended....and her story will come, regardless of the outcome.

[sweetsalty kate]

Slouchy, you posted as I posted. Had to pop back on to say that was a glorious poem. I loved it so much. You're so good.

Continued thanks to all. Still reading. xo

[Christine Sweet]

Surprisingly enough this post makes me equal parts safe and furious. You know death sucks. Gosh, you know. But is it true that it also leaves us a sweet plate of something delicious to graze upon whenever it decides we're hungry? Which depending on their relationship to us beckons us to it's sweet plate more than others, sometimes incessantly. I don't know, I'm naive to real death, poignant death. I never want to really understand it, you know? That must make you mad. I don't want it to.

*Oh yeah, on to the assignment!*

My mother is too many Bible Studies and too much Ambien but she's also ridiculous love and selfless giving. Monkey Bread. Big hugs. Constant presence. And ice cream.

Whenever I call, she answers. Unless she's in a Bible Study.

[Heather]

First, my nanny...
She was a mother to four babies. She never worked a day in her life. I stayed with her and my papaw during the summer when I was younger. We had so much fun. She was a shopaholic, loved soap operas and occasionally was caught cussing someone out and/or flicking them the bird. She always said she wanted to be mean, she was too nice. Is that possible?
Second, my mom...
She is a loon. Crazy funny. She worries too much. Always trying to take care of other people. A giver. A fighter. A really great cook. She is beautiful and looks fabulous for 55! My very best friend. Always.

[kgirl]

Just in case your words didn't have me crying hard enough (I thought they did), I went and read the other comments. Especially Mad's.

I sat where you have sat, stroking the arm of my last grandparent, someone I loved and knew was leaving me, 5 weeks after we had buried her husband. My grandfather. And then I did the same at my dad's side, 8 months pregnant 2 years ago.

I sometimes think that it is unfair that my husband, my age, still has 3 grandparents and two parents. And then I give my head a shake and thank the universe for them, thank the universe that my own children have 3 great-grandparents and 3 grandparents and 2 parents, a total that exceeds any total I could have counted at any point in my life.

Your writing is grace and elegance. May there be peace.

[Jen]

To Katie who made me feel invincible and vulnerable and brave and anything I wanted, who sat on the phone with me and let me describe all the imaginary things I saw around me. You made me feel worthwhile when the world around me didn't want me to. I remember.

To Maw who tteaches me self control, how to be alone, how to have a routine and how to suss out your own voice from all the others screaming around you.

To MawMaw who loved Jack and fed me and smiled when she thought I wasn't looking and winced in pain when she thought I wasn't looking, you were blissfully stubborn.

To Grandma Haynes whose 98 today. I didn't really know you growing up, I knew the things you did, like homemade rolls and a seals cough and chewing snuff and as you have had to quit all your doing what a delight to get to know you. You inspire me to make life less about me, to think less and act more and be okay with the hand you are dealt no matter how poorly it goes

To GG you taught me dignity plain and simple. You taught me that if you love others sometimes the best thing to do is hide what you are suffering through so that they won't suffer for you.

To my own mother, we aren't done yet. You've taught me how different and alike we are, how frail we can be and how stupid we can be and how proud we can be of stupidity's spawn. You've taught me not to draw straight lines and to laugh more than I am inclined and not to take myself so seriously.

Thanks Kate, I needed to do that :) Blessing to you and your family.

[liv]

I don't write about my mother much because we are only newly playing at this friendly relationship between ourselves. It's something about the newness of this time of both of us being wives and mothers at once. I hated her for a lot of years. I wondered where her anger came from for a lot of years. I don't remember afternoons of baking or gardening together. I just remember her angry. Her brand of angry sometimes translated into something even comical. For instance, I remember making her mad about something, and then running for the door as she was tossing a 30 inch tall brass lamp at my head. Today, as a thirtysomething, I tend to think that the image of her running after me with a lamp is comical. I think, even back then, I probably laughed which got me into even more trouble. My grandmothers were my refuge. They shopped, baked, gardened, rubbed my back, made excessively sweet cups of hot tea, and showed me where little stashes of cookies hid. My grandmothers were always my treasures.

[lisa]

I remember her gently telling me that I might not make the cheerleading squad, (she was right) but that she would still love me no matter what.

my mom left too soon. I miss her.

[JP]

My mom is still alive. I was her first. She confided in me. I left home. Then I chose to get married. She was against the idea. She yelled, I listened, confident in my choice. I didn't see her at my wedding, but she came. She hates having her picture taken, but I told the photographer to sneak in at least one, so I'd know she'd been there. The photographer was wonderful. My dad stood in pictures alone. I wondered about my mother often afterwards. Maybe she was depressed I reasoned. If only she'd see a therapist. Slowly, we began talking again. Five years after I married, I had a little girl. My mom came to see us for the first time. I started seeing her, as she was, for the first time. Motherhood changes things ever so gently... ever so violently.
A few days ago, it was her birthday. She told my brother and I that, that morning she had run for an hour, for the first time in her life. She declared it the best birthday ever. My brother and I hardly recognize her... the mom of our youth, holed up in her house, dreaming of other places, always bent on ideals of giving, never taking. On her birthday, she gave me a gift I never asked for.
Thank you. For this post.

[Talorina]

To tell you about my mother is to tell you about my grandmother. (And probably my grandmother's mother, but I don't know that story.) It means to talk about attics and basements, hollers and shattered mountains, cheap glass and heavy crystal, grave-robbers and lost children, my son's blankie and my husband holding my daughter in his arms.

http://deuxdogsdeuxkids.blogspot.com/2010/03/complicated-woman.html