The greatest challenge of having been my mother’s daughter was trying to please her and feeling that I always failed. My mother always seemed anxious and/or sad. She was always working.
And this was after she had come home from having worked as a teacher in the nearby elementary school. She made all my dresses and the pants I wore until I graduated high school and went to college.
She planted a garden in spring and harvest the vegetable during the summer when school was out, and either canned or prepared them packing in the freezer. This she did in addition to regular housework any wife and mother needed to attend.
My mother kept busy, was constantly moving. And yet I felt she was running from something, that all that with which she busied herself served mainly to distract her from something deeper, perhaps a fear or sense of boredom that might lead to a loss of hope.
I never heard my mother speak of her hopes, dreams or wishes. I feel fairly certain she held some, even if unconscious. Maybe she was too afraid to speak them, to even acknowledge their presence.
I do not know any of this for sure, but my gut tells me that my mother was like most humans. Some part of her wanted to know the purpose for her living, the reasons she had incarnated. The intent of all that she had endured and where all that she experienced would take her.
I have these questions.
And I believe they lived within my mother too.
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