Beltane Beltane Moon
Mother’s day. Every year. Since her death. 1964. A long time to be motherless. Almost a life time.
Her stroke changed all our lives. We went on but not well. I often stumbled, not picking myself up and shaking it off, not turning the pain into a gift. Instead, I experienced it as pain.
(Morristown Post Office)
She was a small town girl. Morristown, Indiana. 800 people. Many of them our kin. A rural town right where Indiana breaks into full on country as you travel south, the big cities and heavy industry behind you. Lots of corn and beans (soy beans), tractors, barns, cows, pigs, a few horses. Still that way.
Might have been a small town girl her whole life, except for WWII. Signal Corps. Mom was a WAC. She went to Rome, Naples, Capri, Algiers. After, she married Dad. She had an A.A. degree in teaching, elementary.
Never learned to drive. Can you imagine? A midwestern country girl who never learned to drive. Didn’t stop her from an active life. In our small town, Alexandria, Indiana, there was no spot you couldn’t reach by walking. So Mom went everywhere on foot or riding with Dad.
Warm and quick, kind, loving. Compassionate. You know, the mom you see on the cover of Saturday Evening Post drawn by Normal Rockwell.
Since 1964, she’s been a memory. At times she almost seems to slip away, a murmur, a rumor from the past, like an imaginary place I used to visit as a small boy. Then I recall the garden spider at our kitchen window. Her taking insects in a kleenex to release outside, something I still do. Her voice breaking as she learned her father, Charlie Keaton, my namesake and grandfather, had died.
So, mother’s day has not been a big favorite of mine, not for a long time. Not a happy day with dinner out, flowers and a big hug. No, “remember when?” No, “you’re just what I hoped.” No, “oh, you.” Just not. Absence.