Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul (22 page)
Read Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul Online
Authors: Jack Canfield
Lauren and her mother were waiting for us on their front porch. As I got out of the car, I could see that Lauren’s bangs had been carefully curled and fluffed.
Darn
it,
I thought.
I should have curled Nicolle’s hair too.
Lauren scurried toward the car, then slipped and fell to her knees in her shiny black patent leather shoes. Her mother’s mouth froze in displeasure, and her eyes rolled heavenward.
“Lauren, come here,” she demanded in a stern tone. She kneeled in front of Lauren, took her by the shoulders and spoke into her face.
“Remember what I said. Be careful.” Lauren approached my car with her eyes glued to her patent leather shoes.
I found myself struggling to make conversation with the four-year-olds in the back of the car, just to break the unusual silence. In the rearview mirror, I realized Nicolle’s hair had picked up static from her jacket, and was clinging to her face. I wondered if she’d let me put her hair in pigtails once we got to school. I wished I’d brought a curling iron with me, and maybe some fingernail polish.
At school, mothers were lingering, adjusting headbands, tucking in shirts and straightening ties. The children allowed the adults to fuss over them, but as soon as they were released, bolted into the classroom.
I made sure Lindsey’s collar was straight, that Lauren’s bangs were properly fluffed, tried to smooth the static from Nicolle’s hair, then left, trying not to worry.
Later, when I returned to pick up the three girls, I was nearly mowed down by children erupting from the school. Catapulted by pent-up energy, the children were running, jumping, laughing and shouting. Hair was breaking free from ponytails and bows, neckties were merrily askew, collars were crooked and shirttails flapped in the breeze. Nicolle, Lindsey and Lauren were among them, pink-cheeked, uncombed, happy and beautiful.
I wished I had my camera.
Carolyn C. Armistead
My mother’s mixer is sturdy and heavy. As I carry it into her kitchen from the pantry where it stays hidden in a closet, I marvel that the frail woman she has become can carry it at all. After placing it on the tiny counter between the sink and the stove, I find I have no room for the flour, chocolate chips and eggs. Efficiency has replaced spaciousness in her retirement cottage. So, for lack of a better solution, I put my cache of ingredients in the sink until I need them and search for a spatula.
Looking into the next room, I see my mother sitting at the table with her head pillowed in her arms. For these past ten years, severe asthma has taken its toll and movement is often a chore, taxing breathing already choked with congestion. She sighs and closes her eyes, spent from a night of coughing. Also, although cooking has never been her passion, I know it pains her to see me puttering in her kitchen, and she is hurting for the days when she could mother me with tasty treats. So am I.
Turning back to the mixer, I lift the towel that serves as the mixer’s barrier against the dust of idleness. A nostalgic smell wafts up from the ceramic bowl nestled in the mixer’s turntable. It must be the fragrance of my childhood.
Memories come to me of watching my mother use mixer magic to turn ordinary eggs into white mountains for topping tangy lemon pies and plain, bitter baking chocolate into syrupy sweetness for cream-filled éclairs. The whir of the beaters under my mother’s direction folded sifted flour mixed with a cup of this and a pinch of that into thick batters that became tall, white angel food cakes, round buttery cushions for pineapple upside-down delights, sugar cookies topped with colored sprinkles, and moist bars oozing with melted chocolate chips.
On summer mornings before the Texas heat built up and the fans worked to move the last of the cool night’s air around the kitchen, my mother often did her baking. I remember one special morning, sitting just outside the kitchen listening for the thud of her wooden spoon scraping the last of the beater-whipped batter onto cookie sheets for baking and the clang of the released beaters falling into the bowl. The silence that followed meant that it was time for licking.
If my mother was generous, thick streaks of batter lined the sides of the bowl and the beaters were heavy with whatever she was mixing. That morning, after entering the kitchen and peeking around her apron-tied waist, I saw small mounds of leftover chocolate chip dough that made my mouth water and my mother licking the spoon with guilty pleasure. Fearful of losing even the tiniest nibble of this unprecedented treasure, I tugged at my mother’s apron, demanding her attention. “Ah,” she said, looking down at me. “Don’t worry. I’ve left some just for you. Would you like to lick them clean?”
Laughing at the greed that filled my eyes, she slid out a chair for me. And there we sat, side by side, me with my tongue curled around a dough-covered beater, and she with a wooden spoon and a smile stained in chocolate. Such a simple pleasure and yet such a bowl of shared happiness.
As I stand in my mother’s kitchen looking at her lined face resting on her arms, I wish for that long ago day that is earmarked in my memory. I wish to be sticky with chocolate, smothered by the protection of my mother’s love, and jealously guarded against the ravages of disease and pain. But only in our memories are we allowed a way back.
So I retrieve the recipe I found for a chocolate chip cake and begin to create a gift that I hope will bring a smile to my mother’s face. Flour and eggs, pudding and oil, a pinch of this and a dash of that. A lot of chips to make round dollops of soft melting chocolate. Then the beaters whir, mixing waves of chocolate that roll inside the ceramic bowl. Taking my mother’s spoon, I scrape the batter into the pan for baking and listen to the thud of the wooden spoon against the sides. Something makes me stop, and I look into the next room to see my mother staring at me with the touch of a smile on her face.
In the sudden silence, I see a different way back. Leaving an unprecedented amount of batter in the bowl, I loosen the beaters, letting them clang against the sides. And picking up the bowl, I turn to a mother still beautiful to me, and say, “I’ve left some just for you. Would you like to lick them clean?”
We sit side by side at the table, bent over a bowl of batter and two laden beaters, both of us with sticky fingers and smiles rimmed in chocolate. It is a bowl of happiness that I greedily share once again with my mother.
Kris Hamm Ross
Four feet. Just forty-eight inches. But it might as well have been the Grand Canyon for all the difficulty my mother had in crossing that gap—the space between my little sister’s bed and mine. Each night I watched from my bed as my mother tucked in my little sister to go to sleep. I patiently waited for her to walk over to tuck me in and give me a good-night kiss. But she never did. I suppose she must have done so when I was younger, but I couldn’t remember it. I was seven now, a big girl—apparently too big for bedtime rituals. Why or when my mother stopped, I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that she tucked my little sister in each night, walked past my bed to the door, and, before she turned out the light, turned and said, “Good night.”
At school the Sisters said that whatever you ask God for at your First Holy Communion you will surely get. We were supposed to think very carefully over this, but I didn’t have to think too long to know what I was going to pray for. This was the perfect time to ask Jesus to make my mother tuck me in and kiss me good night.
The day of my First Communion drew to a close. That night, as I hung up my communion dress and got ready for bed, butterflies danced in my stomach. I knew in my heart that I was about to get the best gift of the day. When I climbed into bed, I pulled the blankets up around me, but not all the way up. I wanted to leave some for my mother to pull up. The nightly ritual began. My mother put my sister to bed, tucking the blankets around her and kissing her good night. She stood up. She walked past my bed to the doorway. She started to say, “Good night,” but then she stopped. I held my breath. This was the moment. “This was a beautiful day,” she said softly. And then she said good night and turned off the light.
I quietly cried myself to sleep.
Day after day, I waited for that prayer to be answered, but it never was. My mother’s actions taught me that sometimes God answers “no,” and though I never knew why my mother couldn’t cross that small space to kiss me good night, I eventually came to accept it.
Deep down, though, I never forgot. When I grew up and became a mother myself, I vowed that my children would always know that they were loved. Hugs and kisses were freely given in our home.
In the evening, after tucking the children in their beds upstairs, I usually went back downstairs and dozed off on the couch in the living room. My husband worked the night shift, and as a young mother, I felt safer sleeping downstairs. One night—it must have been after midnight— I was wakened by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. At first the footsteps were loud, and then they suddenly stopped. Whoever it was had seen me.
Finally! Now I would find out just which of my children was raiding the cookie jar during the night. No more waking to be greeted by crumbs all over the kitchen table and blank, innocent looks, in response to my accusations. Tonight the culprit would be caught!
I didn’t move, pretending to be asleep, and waited for the footsteps to resume. When they did, they were ever so gentle on each step so as not to wake me. But they were not coming down toward me anymore. They were retreating back upstairs to the bedroom. I heard a little scurrying above, then quiet footsteps again, almost imperceptible, slowly tiptoeing back down the stairs.
The steps softly came close to me, then stopped. They did not continue on into the kitchen.
Smart child, this one,
I thought,
wants to make sure I’m really asleep.
Well, I was up to the challenge. I didn’t move a hair’s breadth. I continued to breathe deeply as if I were fast asleep. I wasn’t about to play my hand too soon. I was going to catch this cookie thief in the act. I was already preparing my lecture.
Suddenly, I felt a heaviness settle on me. I didn’t move even though it caught me off guard. What was it? Then I realized that this child was putting a blanket over me.
Ever so carefully, so as not to wake me, the child covered my feet, then my arms, and finally, with the utmost care, my back. Little hands briefly touched the back of my neck and then the child bent down and, soft as a feather, gave me a loving good-night kiss.
The footsteps retreated—not to the kitchen, but back upstairs. As I cautiously looked to see who it was who had covered me, I was glad that my youngest daughter, Patricia, didn’t look back from the staircase. She would have seen her mother with tears streaming down her face.
God did give me what I asked for at my First Holy Communion. Maybe he took a little while, and maybe he didn’t answer my prayer in the way I expected, but I was satisfied. Even though my mother hadn’t known how to cross that gaping four-foot space to kiss me good night, somehow my children had learned how.
Georgette Symonds
T
he two most important things a parent can
give a child are roots and wings.
Hodding Carter
Tomorrow is about to arrive. My first child is preparing to leave for college, and the family unit will change forever. This is not a surprise to me, and yet, I am deeply surprised by how quickly this day is speeding toward us. I’m not quite finished with her. I feel betrayed by time.
This is a happy and healthy step in the expected, and hoped for, chain of milestones. She is eager and ready to leave, but I am not nearly ready to let her go. I need to make a few more cupcakes with her, read and recite from
Goodnight Moon,
and maybe create one more fruit basket from Play-Doh. I want to tell her, “Wait a minute!” and have her stand still. And in that time I would hurry to fill her head with the things about life that I am afraid I forgot to tell her. But standing still, she would impatiently reply, “Yes, Mom, I know. You’ve told me.” And she would be right; but I can’t help feeling that I forgot something.
Seventeen years ago, as I stood over her crib watching her breathe, I wrote a letter to my four-day-old infant. It said, “These are the days when doorknobs are unreachable, the summer is long, and tomorrow takes forever to arrive.” In this letter I told her of the plans and dreams I had for the two of us. I promised her tea parties in winter, and tents in the spring. We would do art projects and make surprises for her daddy. And I promised her experience. We would examine sand and flowers and rocks and snowflakes. We would smell the grass, the ocean and burning wood. I would have the gift of learning about our world once again, as she absorbed it for the first time.
We experienced so much more than I promised on that night long ago. We endured many of life’s painful interruptions. When the continuity of our plans had to pause to accommodate sorrow, we grew from the shared hurt and the coping. I never promised her that all of our experiences would be happy, just that her father and I would be there with unquestioning support.
When this tomorrow is actually here, I will keep the final promise I made to my baby daughter. In the letter I told her, “I will guide you as safely as I can to the threshold of adulthood; and there, I will let you go . . . for the days quickly pass when doorknobs are unreachable, summers are long, and tomorrow takes forever to arrive.”