Lucy Tobias

Dear Mom,

If I lived nearer to where you are, I’d take this letter to your gravesite. They say that everything people leave at the National Cemetery, letters, mementos, photographs, all get saved.

It helps to write, to share emotions. I miss you. You were on my side. As a kid, that meant a lot. Sometimes it seemed like the world was a carousel ride that could dramatically and suddenly turn into a courtroom. Adults who wanted to press charges and impose penalties because I was late, got a bad report card, didn’t do the chores, missed church. Whatever. There was a long list of possible transgressions. It seemed to grow as I grew. Through it all, you sat at my table, my defense attorney and best witness.

Like when I was a teenager and inexplicably, through no fault of my own naturally, arrived home after my allotted curfew hour. You remember. Dad stood just inside the front door, arms folded, tall and imposing. Didn’t he ever sleep? Apparently not when I went out on a date.
“Where the hell have you been?” he’d say in his best Navy Captain’s voice, the one used while dressing down underlings. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

I think at this point I was supposed to start whimpering but I could never quite manage it because, yes, I knew EXACTLY what time it was and I knew I was toast.

You just said quietly: “Thank God you are all right.” Then hug me close. That hug made it possible to face the sit down talk with Dad that had to happen. It was part of the drill. But I was all right because your hug set all the priorities straight.

See, that’s what I miss, a lot. You walked a mile or two in my shoes. You gave me unconditional love. Well, not quite. There was that period, my college years, when you started striding ahead, trying to plan my life, the path with the signs that say “Marriage” and “Family”. Right this way, please.

I’d come home for summer break and you’d have a dinner party “Just a few friends”. Right. These “friends” would include total strangers who had never darkened our door before, like the single Lieutenant who happened to be the first cousin of some people who lived nearby on a Naval base years ago. Let’s see, what was their name?

You’d act real casual, like it was spontaneous, not a setup. My Mom the matchmaker. How humiliating. Come on, Mom. You simply don’t invite a single Lieutenant to your home for dinner on a whim. There’s only one reason he was sitting at our dining room table – to meet the Captain’s single, unmarried daughter, who wished she were ANYPLACE but here.

Naturally I thought I could do a much better job myself. I found the man I wanted to marry at the men’s college next door to mine.

But just before he was to come for a visit, you had a heart attack and five days later, died the day he came to meet the family, actually about two hours after you met him. Your sister came in your place to the wedding, pinning orange blossoms in my hair and telling me how happy you would have been. It was a beautiful wedding. I felt you were there.

Some things in my life would surprise you. I learned how to make bread, Mom. The aroma of baking bread fills the kitchen on Saturday mornings. You’d love it.

I wish you were here so I could serve fresh bread and hot tea and say “thank you” a thousand times over, for all the support and love you gave me. I didn’t say “thank you” nearly enough and then it was too late. In fact, I was really meager with the “thank yous”, too busy with my own agenda and plans.

There are many days when I’m sad that you never got to see your grandchildren born and then growing up. You’d like them, Mom. They’re not perfect adults but they’re fun and bright. Yes, well, I sound like a Mom.

I know now that I have my own family that Moms are may things – protector, planner, provider and the keeper of the essential truth – that love is the most important thing, everything else is static interference.

A sepia-toned photo of you in a lovely lace gown hangs by the front door. You are turning, looking over your shoulder at the camera and smiling.

When I first hung that photo, taken years ago, the most amazing thing happened. One morning light caught by crystals hanging in the kitchen came streaming through the wall opening between the two rooms and, for a few minutes, there was a rainbow of light across your face. It was beyond beautiful.

I felt it was your way of saying you never really left, that you will always be with me in my heart.

It must be true. Some friends came for dinner recently. As they were getting ready to leave, one of them walked over, patted your photo and said “Good night, Mom.”

And so I say the same.

Good night, Mom, and thank you.

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