Mother
One of my mother’s characteristics
that brought a lot of pleasure to people around her was her enthusiastic
nature. She became animated about many things, but perhaps the way this trait
manifested that I was most in awe of and enjoyed the most was in her ability to
become excited about just about anything that someone else was talking to her
about. She had the gift of showing what always appeared to be genuine interest
in whatever you were saying – when others might listen politely or might even want
to change the subject. But not my mother. She was right there with you.
Mother also instilled a love of the
outdoors in me. Kathy, Mom, and I – the last kid at home – would go camping and
even backpacking. One trip has kept coming to mind since Mom passed, and while
I’m not quite sure why, I’ll tell you about it.
Mother, Kathy, my friend Teri, and I
went camping at a lake one summer. It was very hot, and Teri and I were lying
on rafts in the middle of the lake for hours. Well, we got very sunburned. Now,
maybe Mom had suggested we put on sunscreen, maybe Kathy did – and maybe more
than once – or maybe this was an era before sunscreen was big. In any case, we
hadn’t put sunscreen on, and we both got very sunburned. This was only a few
days before I was going to go to Acapulco and Teri to Yucatan to live with
Mexican families for the summer.
Well, when we got home from the
camping trip, on seeing Teri’s burn, her mother got very angry at her for
getting the burn right before the important trip. But Mom never got upset about
it. She didn’t make a big thing about it at all. And to me this exemplifies two
traits that I liked about her. She was often very easy-going and she was
non-controlling.
The above are only a few traits that
I loved about my mother. They are three that I am very grateful to her for and
that I have enjoyed all my life so very much.
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