Remembering Jackie

The kids are finally asleep and my daughter is curled up at the foot of our bed with our cat Hobbes, both snoring so softly and rythmically it shouldn’t be called snoring - maybe snuffling. Today was Amelia’s 6th birthday party, and I’ve finally turned on my computer after a day of Luau and poolside splashing, Tiki beach and coconut monkey.

So, there was this moment, I was far enough away (literal and metaphor) from the hijinx in the water, and I was just looking at Amelia play with her friends in the pool – her eyes caught mine, brightened wide, and she begun the kind of smile that triggers…

I cry once a year. On Mothers Day. This year it's Memorial Day and Dad is visiting - memories flood too. Mom’s war was against an unknowable and unrelenting cancer. Not quite as ghostly, pointless and Faithless as a war against fellow humans – but my mom lost her war against cancer 6 years ago. Something to remember at a 6th birthday party. And everything I am today was influenced by my mom.

Where my dad has always been a believer and unquestioned supporter despite my failures (actually I think because of them), my mom was the Teacher. She was a skeptic deep down, she was the voice of some reason, but charged and toned with emotion. 

Where Dad taught Todd and I Wonder and What If, Mom was focused on the links that connected us: math and music, art and ideas. 

For me personally, Mom taught me that in the right sequence these links could form a chain – one so strong that it could brighten a child’s day, or one so shackling it could destroy a civilization. 

And which is more important. 

She planted these seeds and I hope she can somehow see the trees they’ve become, and under whose shade her grandchildren now sit and enjoy. My hope is that my children end up seeing me the same way I only lately have come to see my Mom and Dad. 

It’s what I thought I saw in Amelia’s eyes this afternoon.

Thank you Mom for that warmth, the world is a little colder without. I wrote a poem for the invitation to Mom’s “Remembering Jackie” party six years ago. I can’t seem to find it now, and I certainly no longer have the computer on which it was written. If anyone does have it, please send. So Thankful.

Another year, the breeze pauses and then picks up again, a little cooler still. And, for me, Mom’s voice too is a little quieter: “Stephen, put your jacket on”. Yes, Mom, I did.

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