Mother's day continued

I did go home for Mother's Day, the year 1993. It was just like I had planned, the front porch swing and coffee and curling smoke and laughter and memories.  The old tree's trunk still lay on the ground, covered with a pretty green vine. There were no lightning bugs and we were too lazy and content to go to Sunday School but the red roses were blooming and I was not a wife or mother or friend but just Jane, my mother's daughter.

I did not know what the next Mother's Day would be like. If I had I would have lingered longer with my mama that day.

I can still see her standing in the road, watching,  as we drove off, her arms crossed over her stomach, the belt to her dress slipped up too high, her feet in her old shoes. I wondered as she stood there what she was thinking or seeing in her mind. Was she seeing that black hearse taking her little boy down that road, to bring him back in a little white casket? Was she thinking about the last time Daddy went down that road to the nursing home, leaving her alone in the home where we had lived for over fifty years.   I almost told my husband stop and go back as I saw her standing there.

Mother's Day

I want to go home for Mother's day. I must go home and look into my mama's face again and see her smile.  I want to sit on the front porch and listen to her memories flow like a song with the voice of the porch swing singing along.

We will drink coffee and she will smoke her cigarettes and I will watch the smoke curl away just like I did when I was a little girl, Mama sitting at the sewing machine making me a new feed sack dress while I lay across the bed, thinking how pretty I was going to look.

I will miss the silver popular tree at the corner of the porch, next to the rock wall, the tree where my brother carved his initials so long ago. When the dress was finished my sister Betty posed me in front of that tree and made my picture.

The tree blew down this past winter. I felt sad when Mama told me but now the morning sun will light up my old bedroom.

We will sit on the porch and watch the birds bathe in the birdbath and hear the trains go by on the tracks across the valley. The air will be filled with the smell of honeysuckle and if we sit late enough, we will hear the whippoorwills. If the lightning bugs are out I will jump off the porch and catch some before they fly too high. I will pinch their light off just at the right moment and put one on mine and Mama's finger for a glowing ring just like I did when I was little.

Yes, I must go home for Mother's Day and wear a red rose to Sunday School. I must go home and be a daughter, Mama's little girl, again.