24. She has insightful conversations with me.
25. She spoils me.
I
believe mom spoiled us all.
26. She holds me when I cry.
As I was her
eldest, and experienced major mood swings, she didn't always know how to handle
whatever crises I thought I was having.
One day I came home from school so upset and was really trying to
understand, but could not get anything out of me.
I kept a
journal at the time. She did respect my
privacy. At the same time she really did
want to comfort me and debated on whether to read it or not. She finally did. I had written: "TODAY WAS SUCH A
HORRIBLE DAY, I DON'T EVEN WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT"
Fortunately
for mom, non of my sibs were the emotional train-wreck I appeared to be. Lucky me, I now get to relive those years but
this time I'm the mom and Jenna is the train-wreck - sometimes. She's still more well adjusted than I ever
was.
27. She loves the one I love.
She didn't have a problem with
Roland per se, but rather my decision to get engaged only three days after we
met. Yes. I can understand that. I had a problem with accepting that
myself. I felt like it was a test, and
just because I had said "yes" to the proposal did not mean I had to
go through with the marriage.
I'm certain she had misgivings about
Joh (Corey's spouse) as well - until she met him. How could we all help but not love Joh?
28. She's someone I can talk to about anything.
29 She always encouraged me to get good grades
30. She cared enough to push me to do things I
didn't necessarily want to do.
I remember having to learn the names
of body parts and the cells and chromosomes and so forth. Mom really helped me by making silly
suggestions for ways that might help me remember. I don't know that I viewed it as
"fun" at the time, but her silly suggestions really were helpful.
31. She's patient and has always been patient
with me.
32. She loved me even when I was a jerk.
I have seen each of my
mom's children grow, but I think I notice it the most with Corey. There were several years there that he really
was a jerk. (see here, here and here)
33. She instilled in me a love of God and
Christ.
34. She's neurotic.
I don't remember what
example Corey used, but I'm certain it left the audience in stitches. Mom could be quite funny without trying to
be. Sometimes she'd insist we knew
things or had been in places that we hadn't been. We would always share these inside jokes that
only we would understand as Patrick was NOT with us when we had gone to see
"Watership Down" but for years she believed he was. We would always throw in descriptions of,
"you remember. It was raining and
Helen Hayes was there" as they had been other memories that certain sibs
really didn't understand - because they hadn't been there. And then mom would say, "Oh, be
quiet!" when we started teasing her by lovingly using her words against
her.
35. She's makes her in-laws feel just as
important as her own children
Even during
those rare moments that Roland had visitations with Frances and Pamprin and we
would bring them over as we had planned on visiting mom, she accepted them as
part of family. She had presents beneath
the tree for them. She had a way for
including everybody into her world. Even
the neighbor's grandchildren referred to her as Grandma.
36. She's a great grandmother, and she has
birthday dates with her grandkids.
She took each birthday
child out for lunch along with whatever other family members were available. After Sunny and Patrick had children, she
continued the birthday tradition which each of their children.
No comments:
Post a Comment