Roller Skating with Mom

Mom with Me and Bobby Dean on the Way, DeKalb, Illinois

It is impossible to wake up on this day and not think about your Mother, especially when you are not in the throws of being a Mother of a little one, and there is more time as you wake up to let your mind find it's way into the morning remembering and noticing and being.  This morning I was thinking about my 17 year old Mother, the age she was when I was born.  She was younger than my grand daughter who I was with last night.  Myah is planning a summer graduation trip with her Mom (my daughter) to Greece and is going for her orientation weekend at Loyola University in Chicago next month.  My Mother was boiling diapers and taking care of a very very premature baby in 1950 when she was hardly beyond childhood herself.  She worked so hard to make me safe, and unfortunately had a husband not so long home from military service who was far less ready to be a parent than she was.  By the time my Mother was twenty she had two children and was divorced, it was 1953.

My Mother had grit, and I am so sorry that cancer took her when she was 72.  She had a lot more living and love in her. There are many years and much love and life that my Mother had after she turned twenty, but this morning I found myself remembering and feeling those years when my Mother, my brother Bobby and I lived with her parents our grandparents in DeKalb.  The picture above is in front of the two-flat that we all lived in for a number of years.

One of the things that we did was go roller skating.   I remembered a poem that I wrote for Mother's Day a number of years ago.  I had not thought about roller skating or had a memory of those times for many years.  Again today I found myself remembering my Mother roller skating.

Happy Mother's Day Mom,  I love you.

Mother’s Day 2007

I was driving down the highway,  when I heard about the

roller rink closing.

It had opened the year that my Mother was born.

In that moment of remembering I heard the music,  hundreds of tiny wheels pushing, gliding, spinning round and round the rink.

Wobbly knees and uncertain legs, my Mom holding onto my hand

then letting go – and I am transfixed,

watching my Mother crossing over her legs with the beat, 

head back, smiling as I held onto the side of the rail,

wishing she would come back to hold my hand,

wishing I could tell her how beautiful she was when she skated,

hands pumping, rhythm flowing and eyes twinkling,

as she let go for just one moment,

and got to be herself.