Mother's Day

When you're sick or in pain, you want your Mom.  When y'all are sick or in pain, trust me, y'all want my Mom too. 

We didn't get sick much when we were little, probably because we were allowed to eat potato chips off the floor, we shared ice cream cones, and Ginny swallowed pebbles from the front yard.  This was before antibacterial living.  It was also a time when you didn't go to the pediatrician for every single ailment.  Usually you just went to school in spite of the runny nose.  If the boogers are clear, dammit you are going to school.

But when we did get sick, really sick, Mom was in full force.  "Wes, get your doctor's bag and let's take her temperature."  "Wes, she's throwing up, do we have any phernegan in the house"  (doctors' kids always had the good drugs in the house).  Physical pain, like menstrual cramps, were met with a sledgehammer-variety of prescription medication.  By God Peggy's kids weren't going to feel pain. 

Emotional pain was a little trickier.  Typical middle school rejection heartache was met with a shopping trip.  Always.  While Mom didn't really care about clothes, by God her girls were going to wear the cute stuff.  On one particularly sad day in the 9th grade, Peggy withdrew me from school and we drove directly to the Haywood Mall, where solace could be found.

Fear of failure was met with a reality check.  I worried a lot about my grades.  I know this is a huge surprise to all of you.  Mom listened to me sob about an Algebra test once.  She quietly listened to all my fears and when I was done, and had surpassed the ugly-cry part where you can't even breathe you are so upset, Mom said the following:

Ashby, one day, many years from today, you will be in a room in your house.  In this room will be a crib.  Beside that crib will be a changing table.  On that changing table will be a baby.  This baby will be your baby.  This baby will have shat all over everything.  Yes, it will be everywhere Ashby.  It will be on the baby's skin, it will have splattered on the wall, it will be on your hands, on your clothes, and you will suspect it is also in your mouth.  You will not be able to run to the bathroom to see if babyshit is in your mouth, because you can't leave the baby on the changing table.  The only thing on your mind will be removing the babyshit.

And you will not remember this Algebra test.

And then there is grief.  Oh how we moms want to protect our young from feeling grief.

Peggy buried her own mother on Mother's Day weekend.  Peggy paid someone a ton of money to arrange a spray of roses over Noni's casket (Margaret Kemper Camp Baker).  When the casket arrived, the spray was not good enough.  Noni was a gardener.  Noni's garden was a miracle.  Her casket could not be second-rate.

So Mom took it apart and paintstakingly rebuilt the arrangement.  Also, Noni famously hated carnations so Peggy arranged all the flowers at the funeral so the "hideous" ones containing carnations could not be seen. 

Peggy had spent the past several months doing all she could to help her ailing mother - living in a hospital, wheeling her to radiology, playing Noni's music (on Angel's Wings), acting appropriately when Noni would complain "what is this, a death watch??"  And when it was time for Noni to come home, Peggy purchased a hospital bed, an enormous television for Days of Our Lives Watching, and cast Noni's eyes towards her own garden, a junior version of Noni's.  And Peggy was patient.  When her mother told her to "turn that damn plastic bird in the garden towards me so I can see its wings turning", Peggy diligently walked outside and positioned the plastic bird windmill to her mother's liking. 

Noni spent one night in that perfectly outfitted room.

And when it was over, on Mother's Day in 1999, the Baker family, the Camp family, the Lawton family, and the entire Estill community convened at 316 Wyman Street.  Where Peggy told stories of her mother, and we laughed when we discovered Noni had color coded all her earthly possessions so each of her children would know which antique was there's. 

But she didn't apply a colored sticker to her only valuable piece of jewelry.  Because it was always on her hand.  Noni's ring was not clasically beautiful.  it was fashioned from her own mother's "earbobs."  It sortof looked like an owl, I thought when I was a girl.  I supposed Peggy herself removed it from her hand, I've never asked.

On her last night at home, I had promised Noni I would name a child for her.  She replied "you just want my damn diamond ring."

Where the ring rested from the time it left Noni's hand until Mother's Day 1999, I do not know.  But on Mother's Day afternoon, a hot day, a day with lots of Estil-bred gnats, following a lunch of mayonaissed based funeral food, Peggy took me deep within Noni's garden.  Peggy knelt in front of me.  And Peggy tried to take away some of her little girl's pain.

She gave me the ring. 

I love you Mom.