For My Mother

          As I read the various ads in the local paper all touting their programs to help us celebrate Mother’s Day next Sunday, I wished that I could shower my Mamma with some of their offerings; to pamper her and watch the delight on her face as she opened her gifts.   Did she enjoy her special day in years past?  I think so.  She certainly deserved the celebration.

          Mamma was born in Latvia and immigrated to Australia in the late 1940’s after many years of being shunted around the Displaced Persons camps of Europe.  She arrived with a battered cardboard suitcase, two small daughters and a handful of change she’d managed to acquire by selling off her few precious possessions.

          For years she worked long, grueling hours at the hardest, dirtiest jobs she could find because they paid more, with just one dream: to buy a house.  A house with a separate room for sleeping and one for eating; a house with its own bathroom and, maybe, even a yard.  Some place that was larger than the 10ft square curtained off area that had been our home for so many years in so many camps.

          Each morning she arose before dawn to walk the five miles to her job so she could save the money needed for tram fare.  After working a double shift in a factory, she took the train into the city for her evening job as a dishwasher.  She went home in the dark.  And, eighteen months later, she bought our first house – a tiny weatherboard with a pocket handkerchief back yard and a sliver of grass at the front.

          That first night, we three slept huddled together on the bare boards, wrapped in army blankets for warmth.  It was a wonderful house.

          Mamma’s dream expanded as she continued to work and save – a bigger house, with perhaps a sleeping room for each of us and a front garden where she could plant her roses.

          Mamma’s one extravagance during those years was a Saturday evening outing to the movies.  She would sit in the front stalls (the first ten rows from the front) because she wouldn’t afford herself the luxury of the higher priced back stalls, and be transported to magical places by her movie heroes.  How she loved the movies.

          She instilled in us a love of music and dance and taught us that freedom was a precious gift to be treasured and never taken for granted.  And too, that with hard work anyone could attain their dreams whatever they may be.

          In her later years she suffered through two unsuccessful hip replacement surgeries but, undaunted, took to her motorized wheelchair with gusto and became a well known and loved local ‘grandma on her bike.’

          Mamma loved God, her children, grandchildren and her pets; she loved to see her flowers grow and took joy in reading her Bible.  At 92 she was still learning; a little notebook on her nightstand was filled with new words and their meanings, quotes from interesting people, favorite parts of scripture, poetry and comments on books she had read.

          She was not sad to leave this world.  She knew exactly where she was going and who would be waiting to greet her there.

          We are less because of her passing, but, I know it is only… until we meet again Mummy. 

          And to all the Mothers out there…have a wonderful, blessed Mother’s Day!