Mom (a Christmas interlude)

Nobody in the joyfully-raucous gathering seemed to notice when she slipped away; they were too besotted with food and drink and laughter at oft-told jokes and remembrances to see her moving slowly but surely towards the front porch. The little children were playing with their new treasures and the bigger children were off to themselves sharing the things they didn’t care to share with either the little kids or the adults.

I waited a few moments and then I, similarly unnoticed, followed suit, slipping out into the crisp December night.

She was sitting in her rocking chair on the covered porch, her thin shoulders warmed by a shawl she had probably knitted herself; she was rocking idly and looking out at the bright lights decorating the homes down the lane of the small town she had called her home for so very many years.

“Mom?” I said. “Are you okay?”

My grandmother looked up at me her finely etched features…golden brown and striking…haloed in quiet fingers of soft moonlight and twinkling Christmas lights from the houses down the lane. Mom…everybody called her Mom…rarely smiled but her dark eyes never stopped twinkling (it was one of the more endearing things about her.)

“I’m fine, child,” she said, “I just wanted to get away from alla that ruckus and enjoy some quiet for a little while.” Feeling that I was intruding upon her quiet time, I was about to excuse myself but Mom patted the chair next to her rocker. “Come sit with me.”

Inside the extended assemblage of sons and daughters and nephews and nieces and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were embracing the Christmas night with loud laughter and the easy give and take that comes with shared blood and bonds of love and experience. Mom had spent two days cooking and baking and we were all full to almost bursting with the delectable results of her hard work.

I sat down next to her. My grandmother and I lived on different coasts and I rarely saw her but when I did I was always pleased to sit at the little table by the window (it looked out upon her expansive yard and her well-tended vegetable garden) in her kitchen and listen as she told amazing stories of her long and colorful life. I was very happy that I had come out for this Christmas.

“You must be tired,” I said.

Mom almost smiled. “Cooking for my family isn’t a chore, Buddy,” she said softly. She was the only one who called me “Buddy”…she was the only one was allowed to call me “Buddy”…it was a diminutive version of the nickname my father was best known by. “But I won’t mind getting upstairs to bed tonight…”

She put her thin but incredibly warm hands on top of mine. “I’m glad you came, child,” she said, her voice vaguely wistful, “we don’t get to see nearly enough of you.”

“Yes I know, ma’am,” I said sheepishly, feeling a bit guilty. Mom gave my hand a slight squeeze as if to dispel any such feelings.

We sat quietly for a few while.

“Your grandfather bought me this old chair,” she said. “When you were a little fella…couldn’t been no more than 2…this old chair was in the front room and every night after supper you would wait until you knew I was heading towards it and you would run like the devil and jump into my chair and sit their grinning from ear to ear.”

I’d heard this story many times but truthfully it never got old.

“Aw come on, Buddy’ I would say, let Mom have her chair. And you would laugh…copying the way your Grandfather laughed…that always tickled him no end…and you would get up and let me sit down.”

I smiled. “That doesn’t sound like me at all,” I teased.

Mom patted my hand and laughed softly, musically, lingering in the joy of the memory of me as a child so many years past. “It was just like you, child…you were such a scamp.”

I took in a measure of air…I lived in a huge city and the stillness of the small town Mom called home was something I never really got used to during my visits. “It’s nice here at Christmastime.”

“It’s nice here most of the time, Buddy,” she said serenely, “you city folk don’t have time to think…to time to just breathe.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a chuckle, “you’re right about that.”

We sat quietly again, the laughter from inside the house drowned out by the stillness of the northeastern winter’s night.

I thought about Mom’s long life…more decades long than I would dare to attain myself…and all that she’d done as a woman and a girl, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother…and I felt both proud and humbled to know her…proud and humbled to have some of her vital life force flowing through my own soul. “Mom? You ever regret anything you’ve done in your life?” It was, I knew as soon as I had given voice to it, a silly question but it was too late to retract it.

Mom indulged in a small, patient, enigmatic smile. “Life’s too short for regrets, child,” she said, “you live your life…you do the best you can…and you let God sort out the rest. You hear me?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Slowly she rose to her feet and stretched. “It’s getting chilly out here, we’d best get back inside.”

I stood up and offered my arm; she smiled, ever so slightly, and looped her arm in mine and we moved, slowly but surely, across the porch towards the front door.

“Merry Christmas, Buddy,” she said, giving my arm an affectionate squeeze.

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” I said, taking in one last lungful of the brisk night air before I opened the door for her.

For Mom

- Michael K. “Buddy” Willis -