I'm Thankful for my Mother

In 2010, I decided to participate in the 30 days of Thanksgiving on Facebook, which meant that you posted a different thing you were thankful for, each day of November. At that time, I didn't have a job, and I needed to move, so I didn't feel like I had a lot to be thankful for. I plowed ahead, anyway, and managed to come up with something to be thankful for, every day. It was actually quite healing, to dig deep into my heart and soul, looking for things that had blessed my life, even though I was very low. I didn't participate in the 30 days of Thanksgiving again, until this year, when I decided to focus on Facebook friends. I stuck with it for 11 days, then I let other things get in the way. The two most important people in my life were not included in the first 11 thankful days. I have decided that I should thank them in my blog, because there just isn't enough room for everything I want to say about them in a status update.

Today, I'm going to tell you about my mother, Marcella Simmons. I believe one tremendous event in her childhood was the cornerstone for the kind of person and mother she became, and I didn't understand how much it affected her life, until about a year ago, when I realized that the possibility that she will die is greater than the possibility that she will live. That event was the death of her mother, when she was seven years of age. It wasn't just that she had lost her mother, it was how she lost her mother. Her mother died giving birth to a 15-pound stillborn child. The story I've been told is that an inexperienced young doctor was assisting with the birth and kept cutting away her flesh, so that the baby could pass through the birth canal, and she basically bled to death. My mother believes, if her mother had been in the hospital, she would not have been butchered to death. This grandmother, whom I have not met, has been described to me as a wonderful Christian woman who was kind, thoughtful, caring, and loving. It has been said her husband would have been a different man, had she lived. The man I knew as my grandfather seemed bitter, distant, and uncaring, to me. I was afraid of him and had as little to do with him as possible. I know this bothered my mother. I know, now, that she wanted more than anything for her children to have as loving a relationship with their grandfather as she had had with her grandfather.

I believe my mother had all her babies via Cesarean section, to ensure that she would live to be their mother. I believe this strong desire to never leave her children without a mother is what gave her the will to survive nearly losing her life, with the birth of her third child, as well as doing what needed to be done to survive breast cancer, when her children were still in elementary school. When it was determined that I needed heart surgery, she gave me the biggest birthday party I ever had, for my fifth birthday; I went into the hospital just days after, and she slept on a bed in my hospital room, the entire time I was there, which seemed like months and months. She knew I was good at lots of things, but she was hesitant to praise me too much, because she didn't want me to become conceited. When I gave birth to my only child, I didn't think about it at the time, when she continually urged me to have him via C-section, but I now realize that she must have been horrified that I would die in childbirth.

A couple paragraphs ago, I mentioned her grandfather. One of my Facebook friends recently posted that "Christmas smells like clementines", and that brought a childhood memory into focus. Mother tells of how she spent Christmas at her grandfather's, growing up. Her grandfather had a general store and could get his hands on lots of interesting things. She remembers having oranges at Christmas, because they were very special ... something you couldn't have anytime you thought about it. She has described to me how her grandfather would peel the oranges and gently separate the sections, handing them out to his grandchildren. Mother put a pristine apple and orange in my stocking every year, growing up, along with nuts in the shell, that I would have to crack open to eat. Of course, I thought Santa had put them there, and I thought Santa gave these things to everyone for Christmas. Naturally, I did the same with my own child. A few years ago, when my boy was grown and no longer living with me, he stopped by the house for Christmas (I was living with Mother at the time). I had filled a stocking for him, and, as he pulled out the orange and apple, my mother shared her story with him. His eyes lit up with understanding as he exclaimed, "So that's why you've always put an apple and an orange in my stocking! It never made sense to me before!" Literally until that moment, I had always thought everyone's stocking had an apple and an orange, and I had never thought it needed any kind of explanation!

I am so thankful that I have had my mother to love and give love for so many wonderful years. She was younger than I am now, when she lost the love of her life, my father, to a heart attack. For each year since then, we have grown closer and closer, until now I dread the thought of losing her. I miss not being with her every day, and I am looking forward to visiting her for a few days, this week. I love you, Mother!!

Teah Layne