Speaking of Lights

Yesterday my grandson pointed out  that our house needed more Christmas lights, I agree! We have one humble strand wrapping our front window. "GiGi, put some on the roof!" he exclaimed as we passed our neighbor's house trimmed with white lights from floor to rooftop. As if I can somehow levitate myself and instantaneously lay white lights across our roof like some sort of magician. "GiGi, it's easy," Sure! Right! I immediately thought how my Mom would laugh at that. I mused for a moment of how our conversation might go - my Mom telling me stories from my own childhood that resembled that of my grandchild, me telling her all the other silly things he said that week - and wished there was a cell tower in Heaven. Later in the evening, I stumbled over the last essay I wrote in my English Composition class. It's funny how a certain theme can follow you throughout the day ;

The Light of Her Eyes

I was a rambunctious child, constantly getting under foot, and finding no reason to slow my ambitious speed.  There were many things that drew my attention; things that fluttered, things that hopped, things that were brightly colored and things that rattled and rumbled. When I wasn’t outside hanging from some precarious tree limb, I was teaching my little brother how to cover the living room and halls with blankets in order to re-create the Swiss Family Robinson tree-house. When I wasn’t riding my dirt bike through the clay covered ground in the Georgia woods, I was “borrowing” plywood from my father’s shed to build a ramp for that same dirt bike. While my sister dressed her Barbie in pink and married her off to Ken, I cut all Barbie’s hair off, picked up the Ken doll and drove them both off the top bunk in Barbie’s car. Of course, I attempted to land them as close as possible to the tile on the bathroom floor, so I could watch the car spin in circles, should I be lucky enough that it landed wheels down. My brother, my father and my sister were unwittingly a constant part of my playful life, but there was one person who always seemed to linger just out of reach.

All I understood about life and love breathed itself out in my imagined world, where butterflies could talk and my bike had wings. My tree-house was a the perfect place to survey my little world, but only my brother would join me up there, and most of the time he was my “captive” as we played “Cowboys and Indians”. My sister would make us “tea” from the creek water and “cupcakes” from the hardened clay. My father would cut patterns in the grass with the mower and my brother and I would make our journey through the “wilderness trail” to find the swing set and pretend we were sailing to the New World on our see-saw. And there would be my mother, calling out to my father, questioning why he kept cutting the grass in such odd patterns.

I used to look for her in her eyes; they were often far from me, and changed from green to blue. At times they were sympathetic, at times worrisome; sometimes they seemed to burn with wrath, and were soon swallowed in tears. But most of the time they were aloof, and rendered no sign of how I should reach their dwelling. My mother’s eyes were as mysterious as she was, and I was too young to understand their complexity. I wanted to know what she thought, what she wanted, and how she felt. I thought that she must love me, because she spent her days and her nights being my Ma, the one person on earth I knew would be with me forever.

My favorite subject in school was History, and I spent most of time pretending to be every explorer and American hero I learned of that year. My father and mother were both teachers; while my father taught History to middle school children and high school students, my mother taught Kindergarteners their ABC’s. I joined my father’s class occasionally, simply because I liked to help him tell my favorite historical tales. And, from time to time, I would join my mother’s class, but largely because I had earned a detention and was sent there to do my “time”. I watched her dote over the children in the class, singing songs and praising their smallest accomplishments, and wondered how these children had found the key to open the door of her heart, and I had not. Or so it seemed, to me.

Before I knew it, I had become one of those high school students that my father taught in school. My teenage years were just as much of an adventure as my childhood years. My tree-house was long ago torn down, but my adventurous spirit had only grown. I was a dancer, a singer, and an athlete. I liked acting and drawing and joined any extra-circular activity available to me. I was up at dawn running five miles from my house to school, spending my hours at school hamming up the classroom with my fellow students and impressing my teachers with my vast knowledge. My sister and I shared a love for youth group and mission trips, and my brother and I enjoyed meandering about the town and making the social rounds. My father and I would talk of my studies and debate politics and religion, even though we were on the same side, just for fun. And my mother would be there, lying in her bed, exhausted from work and watching television.

I married at a young age, just ten days after I turned eighteen, and not sooner because my mother refused to sign the release. I didn’t understand why my mother didn’t see that I was a grown woman now. I had graduated with honors seven months prior, and thought I knew, well, everything. Of course, I was certain by now that she had never really seen me at all.

But that all changed in a moment. I was nineteen years old, it was Christmas Eve, and I was expecting my first child in mid-April of the next year. My father and mother had planned to have Christmas Eve dinner with my husband and I that evening. While I prepared the meal, I thought about my own childhood, and how I couldn’t wait to play all my favorite childhood games with my own child. Then, suddenly, my water broke! I was barely five months pregnant, and Baby was not due for several months. I wrote a quick note for my parents, rushed out the door, and my husband took me to the hospital. By the time my parents arrived the doctors had my contractions under control, and my Baby was safe, for now. My father sat alongside my husband, mulling over politics and religion, while my mother sat at my side, holding my hand. She looked into my eyes and told me she couldn’t wait to meet her grandbaby, and that she knew my baby would be just like me, full of energy, and full of light. And, suddenly, for the first time, I noticed the light in her eyes.

Two months later I delivered a healthy baby girl, and my mother was again at my side. She held her in her arms and sang her wistful lullabies. She taught me how to nurse her, how to comfort her, and how to hold her. As I wrapped my arms around my little angel, I looked into her precious eyes. I could not help but notice that they seemed to change from blue to green. It was almost magical, and it was most certainly mysterious, but all at once, I understood. In those eyes I saw everything I ever wanted to know. I knew, for sure, that my mother loved me as I loved this child. No one on earth could ever dampen this fervent love, and nothing in heaven could keep us apart. We would be together, forever. And, after all this time, I finally saw it, in the light of her eyes.

On February 1, 2010, I answered a phone call from my father. My mother had passed out, and he needed help getting her up from the floor. In the years previous her health had severely declined, and it was not unusual for her to lose her strength, and her fainting spells were so often that she refused being carried off to the hospital every time they occurred, insisting that she needed only to rest and a bit of nourishment. My father, always wanting to please her, had honored her wish and not called for the ambulance. He called me instead.

 As I commuted to my parents’ home, I thought about the weekend. My mother and I had been shopping and to lunch, and she randomly began to tell me stories about my childhood. She told me how she was in awe of my energy and free spirit. She told me she wished she could have been like me, and that she admired me so much that she was mindful not to quench my independence, and was careful to let me explore the world on my own. She laughed as she told me that she couldn’t catch me to hold me if she tried, and that my father was the only one who ever had any luck with that. Then she told me she hoped that I would be lucky enough, one day, to find a man like my father, and for the first time ever she told me that my father was the love of her life. I listened as if I were in a trance, completely engrossed in her reminiscences. As I pulled in the drive, I was anxious to see her, and hoping to hear more.

That morning changed my life forever. My mother did not wake up from her fainting spell, but was carried aloft to another world altogether. I tried to rouse her, but her eyes were closed, and her body completely still. Though my father shared the room with me, I suddenly felt so alone. The woman that I knew would be with me forever, my mother, seemed to abandon me completely. As I surrendered to tears of sorrow, my daughter, now grown and nearing eighteen, came into my mind. I thought about the light in her eyes – the very same light that I had seen in my mother’s eyes long ago at the hospital – and I realized once again, my mother loved me and would be with me forever.