I was coming up the access road next to the freeway near my home. I had been to the grocery store, and my distress at the current cost of food was still fresh. It was 113 degrees, late summer on the desert, and the drivers around me seemed more aggressive than usual. I got caught at the light, and took a deep breath. That’s when I saw him.

He was standing in the shadow of a dusty oleander bush, and he was perhaps as old as 17. He was almost transparent with the heat, and his face was pinched and pale, the circles under his eyes almost as blue as they were. He had a small backpack, and a sign that I couldn’t have read if I’d tried to. I looked him in the eyes, and he looked back at me. I glanced at the light, saw that there was a brief window of time, and dug into my purse for the bill that I had I managed to escape with from the grocery store. I rolled down my window, and he stepped over to where I was. I simply handed him the money, pointed towards the store, and then the light turned green. He said, “Thank you,” and I went home to my worries, my utility bill, and the remnants of my middle age.

He was still a child, and he was completely alone and in very rough shape. I had given him what cash I had on me, and it was just enough for a few survival supplies. I could only hope that he didn’t end up being hurt by worse than the heat and hunger.

Today, I will go back past the place where he stood. I made up a list of places where he can call for help. But if he is still there, I will probably give him enough money to go back to the store for more food and water. If that makes me a fool or a bleeding heart, then so be it.

As a mother, I have discovered that there are few tasks any more difficult than finding words for another mother who has lost her child. The respective ages of the mother, or of her child, do not matter. For any woman who has both brought a baby into the world, and then faced an hour when she is left behind on this earth without her child – regardless of how many minutes or decades later that time might arrive – there is nothing that really can be said except, “I am so very sorry.” 

I sat with a mother whose child left this earth as soon as he was born, and her grief was no less deep than the grief of the mother who was almost 90 and lost a son in his 60s, who was himself a grandfather. There was no difference in what each of them felt.  Many people believe that talking about a mother’s child who has died brings her more pain. The truth is that when you silence the name of the child or keep a memory to yourself, you deny a mother genuine comfort. Her heart is already filled with a thousand thoughts, and knowing that you are also remembering her son or daughter is very important. 

Every life has value and is treasured by God. Luke says, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

What this passage tells us is that if even the smallest, most undistinguished little brown bird is known to God, then each of us matters. Even the most brief existence, fragile person, or troubled soul is precious to Him.

Perhaps we can best understand the unconditional love of God if we look at how a mother loves her child. Genuine maternal devotion comes from somewhere other than rational thought. We are aware that our children aren’t perfect, but we don’t judge them by their last mistakes, or their current weaknesses. We forgive them over and over again, whether or not they ever ask for our pardon, and we claim them always. They are our children, always. We love them, always.

We are not blind to their faults, but they are so much more to us than their imperfections. We hurt when they fall, we rejoice when they rise up again, and if they pass from this world out of the reach of our arms and into the hands of a loving God — we try to accept what cannot possibly be understood.

One mother asked me to find something from the bible or in scriptures that would help honor her daughter, who had died. I did not find anything that seemed more suited for her than the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, who is known to have revered life, and the good and gentle things of the world.

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

Ecclesiastes also tells us:

To everything there is a season, 

And a time to every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born and a time to die; 

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; 

A time to mourn and a time to dance; 

A time to get, and a time to lose; 

A time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend and a time to sew; 

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; 

A time of war, and a time of peace.

May God lift up all mothers who love their children, no matter how any of them come into this world, or leave it. Underneath our flesh of many colors, we share a single heartbeat.

It’s Christmas time, and during an ordinary year — regardless of how rough a year may have been — I put up the Christmas tree. Much is written — probably too much — about how meaningful it is to relive memories as ornaments are unwrapped and the ghosts of Christmases past emerge from storage. I subscribe to this sentiment under usual circumstances, but this year I couldn’t bring myself to take out the grade school creations, my children’s cotton ball Santas, my mother’s birds and my father’s mooses, and the little bell that had been on my first tree as a baby. Instead, I opted for the memory-neutral little artificial tree that my daughter picked up on sale for me a couple of years ago as something that I could put on the patio. Instead, it’s in the living room in the usual spot of the more sentimental tree, minus the angels and the reindeer that mean so much to me.

Next year, I will bear down on the blade of days gone by, and I will bring everything out again. I won’t hide from the things I hold dear for more than one December. But this season — this bittersweet “most wonderful time of the year — I just need a break from the things that broke my heart.

Last evening, I reached for a lidded china box and managed to flip its delicate lid onto the tile floor. The phrase “broke into a thousand pieces” was coined for the aftermath.

I was sad for several reasons. One, the box was old, beautiful, and very useful. Two, somebody I used to love gave it to me. And three, I liked it. A lot. Then I started thinking about my mother, and how she would have reacted to breaking the ornate lid of an antique china box.

She would have sighed, then said, “Oh well, at least I didn’t break the useful part that holds stuff. And I’m not trying to hide anything anyway, so the lid doesn’t matter.”

But to me, it was all about that lid. The swirls and flowers, and all the gold edging. The fact that it fit perfectly onto a piece that kept my earrings off the floor was just a bonus.

For me, the good part is gone, even if the useful part (which is still being used) is intact and unscathed.

My mother’s ability to retrieve what was left from any tragedy and make do is what made her magnificent. My love for lids and covers is hard to explain, but I have always been fond of keeping things out of view. I am not fond of locks, but I love slight barriers.

In the meantime, the useful part of the china box retains its position on my dresser, where is has remained for many years. It’s form has been changed forever, even if its function has not.

Eggs were a serious matter to my grandmother. She had strong opinions about what color the yolks should be, how the whites should perform, and how they should “set up.” She was famous for her angel food cakes, and even had a small side business baking them for others. I was always glad when there was a “customer cake” in the planning, because that meant that egg noodles would also be in the offing.

In the summer when I visited her in Greencastle, Indiana I was charged with the solemn duty of bringing the eggs from the local creamery. She carefully counted out the right amount of money and put it in an envelope in the bottom of the large basket that I would use for the precious cargo. I walked the short distance to the little block building that served as the distribution point to egg customers, and that processed for all the egg farmers in the area.

The creamery ladies were always ready for me. They selected three dozen or so eggs that they thought were perfect, and set them with great care in the big basket, counting them out for me. One, two, three, four… I handed them the envelope without looking at the amount, and they never looked at the contents, either.

Then, I walked as carefully as I could. Nitroglycerin has been transported with fewer nerves than I felt carrying Grade AA eggs home to my grandmother.

When I walked across the porch with the basket, she was waiting for me, her apron already tied on. She followed me to the kitchen table, and I set down the basket. She looked inside, and said, “These look pretty good.”

Out of my grandmother, that was high praise. I was lightheaded with relief.

She disappeared into the kitchen with a remark something like, “I hope this high humidity doesn’t affect the cake.”

I knew that good or bad, the cake’s fate was out of my hands. But I wasn’t really worried. I had never seen my grandmother fail to produce an angel food cake worthy of the name. Regardless, egg noodles wouldn’t be far behind.

Thirty years ago, I was in Danville, Indiana getting ready to be married for the second time. It was going to be a small event, because I had been divorced some years earlier, and my parents wanted to keep everything discreet. David and I didn’t mind, because neither of us wanted a big wedding with a lot of bridal dust being kicked up on our behalf. My mother and sister had taken care of the few details that needed to be addressed, and I had flown in from Arizona a few days ahead of David so that we could be married in my parents’ back yard under the arbor that my mother had built and covered with roses.

My sister, Buffy, had an apartment in the old Victorian house that had once been the funeral home. I was staying with her, and we were enjoying having a visit, wedding or not. Late one evening, her upstairs neighbors rapped on front door, and motioned for us to follow. We slipped outside, went across the yard, and trailed behind them to the storm sewer that opened up on the street. There lined up in the opening were a half a dozen little faces, each belonging to a baby raccoon. They were not alarmed by our appearance, as they could have slipped easily back into the safety of the storm sewer. As it was, we got a great look at them, and at their parents who emerged to stroll back and forth. My sister got her camera, and everybody cooperated by letting us take their pictures.

 A few weeks later when I remembered to develop the film that we had shot at the wedding, the photos we had taken at the wedding were memorable. But the first half of the first roll was filled with baby raccoons, and my sister’s long ago neighbors.

So, happy anniversary, David. Nobody would ever understand why baby raccoons remind me of our wedding.

My mother loved birds. She studied them, fed them, followed them, and learned to whistle their intricate calls. Not only can I not whistle, but I don’t have the attention span to learn and retain everything my mother knew about birds.

But, there is no question that I love them. Especially the ones in my backyard. This morning, I hauled a watering can to a lantana that I am trying to talk into surviving. As I trickled water from the can onto the bush, a hummingbird came down to try to drink. I told him that the stream was too strong for him, but he ignored me and tried anyway. I told him I would put a fresh batch of sugar swill into his little feeder. He sat on the lantana, a mere foot or so away from me, and waited for me to finish watering while he chirped that little tiny rusty hinge sound that hummingbirds make. Then he sat on the shepherd’s hook that holds his feeder, and waited for me to go to the house, refill the feeder, and return.

It was an encounter that my mother would have treasured, and probably made several phone calls about, one of them to me. I wish I could phone her today and say, “Guess what happened to me this morning?”

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  And thanks for the hummingbird. I am sure you pointed him my direction.

We built the house as quickly as we could, because the children we had adopted needed bedrooms and a place to play. The neighborhood was so raw and new that there were no neighbors. But as other houses were added, and other households took roots, we were different. Not the same. Out of place. My children didn’t look like all the rest.

Deep into the first summer, I was lonely, frustrated, and finished with my attempts to get anything to grow in the heat in Arizona. I heard the knock at the door, and answered it with a baby in my arms, and two on the floor at my feet. The little brown man who stood there said, “I will help you with your yard.”

 I recognized him. He appeared next door every other week, and when he left at the end of a few hours, everything was manicured, perfect, and uniform. I said, “I don’t have much of a budget.”

 He answered, “Budget? You mean money? I don’t need much.”

He was true to his word, as it turned out. Every other week, when he was finished with the perfection next door, he went quietly into my yard and teased things into growing. He brought starts of pepper plants, and anything that seemed colorful, hardy, and stubborn against the sun. Eventually, my back yard was a friendly place, with splashes of red and green.

I traded him a fountain that I was afraid my kids would climb, for a brick patio that still sits as tidy and even as it did a couple of decades ago. I still plant peppers, and the pomegranate tree that he liked trimmed and I didn’t is now bushy, out of control, and prolific.

Manuel was part of the warm months for years, until one day I got word that his wife had died, and he was so sad that he went home.

Home, where he wouldn’t be so lonely. 
 

My grandmother had a little side business baking angel food cakes. She used to send me to the creamery, which was right up the street and around the corner from her house. I didn’t have to cross a single street, so I could go alone, the coins in my pocket to pay for the eggs that waited for me.

 If Mrs. Mullins (my grandmother) had a big cake order in, the ladies at the creamery set aside the very best eggs (or the ones they deemed were the very best) for her. They were always in a special place in a box, right by the window, a slip of paper tucked in among the carefully stacked selections. 

I carried everything home in a great big woven basket, and I never broke a single egg. I wouldn’t have dared. The cake business would have staggered under the loss.

The creamery was a fascinating place, too. All the farmers sent in their eggs in bulk, and that’s where they were candled, graded, sized, etc. I used to watch it all for hours at a stretch. I was welcomed, too, mostly by room being made for me, and whatever chair I could find. I always just sat there between two great big Indiana women, while they talked, their eyes never moving from the work they were doing.

I thought I could eventually work at the creamery, in my own cotton summer dress with the white apron tied over the front. I said something to my grandmother, who replied, “It sounds fine to me, but your mother might have other ideas.”

There is still something reassuring to me about the low hum of conversation exchanged by women as they are working, and the almost invisible way a child can be incorporated into the cadence of what they’re doing.   

When my kids were young, my daughter described her dreams as “night movies.” I liked the term, and tucked it away for future use.

 I usually don’t remember dreams, but I have had a couple that were more revelations than post-pizza epiphanies. Last night’s will remain with me for awhile.

 Somehow, I had ended up somewhere far away from home. I was young, single, and about to be married off to somebody very young, and very rich. I insisted that I wanted to go back to  Arizona and David, and resume my life with all it’s accompaniments — aging, limited funds, and unending challenges. I finally prevailed, and was transported back. In fact, I woke up to the dogs blasting through the dog door to bark at the quail family sitting on the wall, who simply turned their backs and continued eating. The kitchen sat dark, and the paper was still in the driveway. Morning had broken.

So today I’m here doing what I usually do, but somehow I feel as if I have chosen this life, these people I love, and this existence. I did in a dream. I believe I would do so again in the bright light of day, if the choice was mine to make.