I can still hear her voice encouraging me on my first date. “Go,” she ordered. “Have fun,” she smiled. “And don’t let him touch you,” she warned. And when I was older, and a date had left me waiting while he went out on the boardwalk with someone else, my mother found him and later told me, “I gave him a piece of my mind.” Though mortified at the time by her behavior, it is a memory I cherish.
Later in life, I wondered how she could know so much about me that I did not know about myself. She knew even though my marks were average in school, that I was just bored but smart enough. She believed in me even when I made mistakes that caused others to shudder. She wanted me to be more than she had been, when I thought she was everything I wanted to be.
Recently my children—a son and daughter—came to visit. In their forties now, they are married and with children of their own. Both were tired and soon fell asleep, one on the couch, the other on the bed. Carefully, while they slept, I took some blankets and tucked them in, as I had done so many times when they were young. I took the telephone off the receiver, so they would not be disturbed, lowered the shades, and for a precious moment, watched over them, grateful to be, just as my mother had been, a mother first.