Ron calls me Lois Junior. It’s a compliment in case you are wondering. I’m so much like my mom it’s uncanny.
Do you ever catch a movement, a pose, a gesture out of the corner of your eye … and recognize that it belongs to someone else? I do that fairly often. I see my mom in my hands, in how I curl up when I lay down, in how the tears leak from the corner my eyes when I worship.
I’m reminded of my mom every Friday night when we keep the grandsons. These boys love for us to hide behind furniture or a wall … and at just the right time, to jump out to “scare” them. The boys double over in laughter and beg for more. My sons did the same with their grandma so many years ago. She loved to catch them unawares and startle them. She did it to grownups too … only in a more subtle way. She hid a rubber snake in the guest bed at the beach house. You knew you were loved when she scared you silly with that snake!
Mom loved laughter, funny stories, family times, and good music. I have her copy of Doll Dance on my piano … not sure I can learn to play it but I want to. I can remember many family times when we gathered around some family member playing the piano … sometimes just for listening and other times to sing with one another. In our last several years together we gathered just about every Sunday for lunch – as many family members as possible and often a guest or two. I brought that tradition here to Texas with me … our sons, their wives, and the grandsons gather for lunch. Occasionally our sons will pick up the guitars … the little ones love to join in with maracas and dance. Eventually they will pick up instruments of their own and play along. I will look forward to telling the little ones about their great-grandma and how she loved music and would love to hear them play!
It’s Mom’s birthday today … I miss her. Happy birthday, Mom!
“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.” ~~Kate Douglas Wiggin
