Time and Mother

The past is always with us. I feel this most with my wife: a moment with her recalls other moments. We shaped each other’s lives, and the marks each moment made are more than merely memories. We clean the kitchen, and in that time lives a little of the other times we’ve cleaned or kissed there. Not every echo is welcome—I remember times I’ve screwed up too—but each smile holds others; from shy beginnings to comfortable welcomings.

But my mother and I did not meet as equals. My parents were “in loco deus” for a while to me. True, I turned her life upside down (I was the firstborn), but I was completely unaware of that at the time. All I knew was that, for a time, she and my father were the center of my universe. Of course my universe grew, and eventually, thanks in part to their guidance, I met the God they served; and I have in my turn served (all too feebly) in the same capacity to my own children.

We meet as equals now: she a mother, I a father (and older now than she was when I left home). We’re equals and yet not equals, because the past is with us. The time for obedience is over, but the shape to my life from the times of obedience is still there for me, and the shape is there for her.

I remember, and try to imitate, her self-disciplined love—devoting her efforts to the needs we had, and looking out for ways to bring joy. I’m not nearly so good at figuring those out.

I love my mother.