No Mother's Day will ever mean more to me than this one. As I write this, 10-week-old Jenifer Kathleen sleeps in her bassinet. She is my mid-life crisis, my joyous surprise. I never thought I'd be a mother.
I am older than most first-time moms. But I am like them: I frequently stop what I'm doing to admire her. I make wishes for her.Most of all, I hope that she will love me as much as I love my mother.
My mother, Mary Collins, was born in Teton, Idaho, in 1924. Her parents were potato farmers. Like my Jen, Mom was a surprise. Their three boys, her brothers, were already grown up.
She was born blind. Among her earliest memories are long car trips her parents hauled her on to visit a series of doctors, looking for someone who could make her see.
It didn't happen. Yet she sees better than anyone I know.
Mom doesn't judge people by how they look or the color of her skin. Consequently, my siblings and I grew up color blind. And by the time we were old enough to understand the concept of ugly, we didn't care.
When Mom didn't like one of my friends, it was because of who they were, not how they looked or dressed. It took me a long time to admit that she usually was right and even longer to get over being irked by it.
I learned to respect her discernment. Without it, I might have overlooked the man I married. But Mom adored him and that was intriguing.
My father, Frank, who died in 1994, was also blind. Because he could see until he was 13, he was able to teach my mother cursive, shaping the letters with copper wire.
I grew up in an Ozzie-and-Harriet family. Mom stayed home with the kids, Dad worked. They held hands for 43 years and teased and talked to each other like the life partners they were. I'm not joking when I say I didn't marry until I was 37 because theirs was a hard act to follow.
My family was odd in two ways: When I learned to drive, I got to drop my parents off at their appointments. And we actually looked forward to power outages. Dad lit the candles, Mom cooked on the gas stove. And we usually played a game of Scrabble. It was festive. On really good nights, Mom read us ghost stories in the dark. I remember being shocked that other mothers couldn't do that.
Mom learned to play piano when she was 5. She learned Braille soon after and went to public schools long before "mainstreaming" was the norm. She's an accomplished musician, has perfect pitch and got to play the violin for David Rubinoff when she was 16.
She's never left the United States, but my folks made sure we saw a lot of it as a family. We took a train to the World's Fair in Seattle in 1964. We've visited many states, always went camping and, like most families, we've "done" Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm.
When I was 15, Mom and I went into business together so I could earn money for a student tour of Mexico. She took a motor newspaper route delivering the Post-Register (probably the first blind person to have a motor route). I drove, she stuffed the boxes and we formed a strong friendship just visiting with each other two hours every day.
We always dreamed we'd save the money for a mother-daughter jaunt to England, but things kept coming up and we never did. Now we probably never will, and that's a dream I set aside with great reluctance.
Somehow, I always believed we'd have lots of time for our trip, so I focused on other things. While I wasn't paying attention, time ravaged her hip. Arthritis has eaten it up, and she walks with great pain, bone on bone.
The national media have been busy explaining how to teach infants so their brains will develop properly. I eat those articles up: Read to baby. Talk to her. Sing.
Mom already knew those things. She taught each of us to read, using books she made with print on one page, Braille on the other, before we even went to school. She sang to us, talked to us, prayed with and for us.
Her agenda didn't just include brain development. She was interested in our character. Forced to choose, I suspect she'd want moral, decent, giving children more than smart ones.
She's an activist - a real one. She's never commiserated with friends about all the things that are wrong with the universe. She's tried to correct them, one at a time.
When she met a family that had been talked into coming to America, then found themselves stranded, she staged the rummage sale of the century, raising more than $1,500 to get them on their feet. The fact that our house was literally buried by donated items didn't faze her. She just shoved our furniture aside and asked for more. She browbeat, wheedled and charmed donations of time, a vacant store for the sale and advertising. Twenty-five years later, that family still keeps in touch with her.
Someone told her about a young man who was picked up for hitchhiking and ended up lost in the jail system. She had him out by morning and furnished the lunch he took on the bus ride (paid for by the city) home. They never met.
A long line of elected officials have been blistered by her written challenges to what she perceived as unfair policy. Many of those policies have been changed.
What I try to teach Jenifer will be based in her example.
She taught me not to worry about the things you can't change, but never to walk away from those you can. And that sometimes you don't know which is which until you joust with the windmill.
A lot of people think it's tragic that she is blind. If you offered her vision, she wouldn't take it. She's never had it, doesn't miss it and wouldn't know what to do with it. One of her closest friends was a deaf man. They often debated. He thought being blind would be terrible. She was glad she wasn't deaf. I loved watching them. At movies, she'd sign the dialogue and he would describe the action for her.
I will, in her honor, teach Jenifer to enjoy the world and her life. To accept the setbacks and move ahead. To never let others define the boundaries of her dreams.
When caring for an infant seems an insurmountable, exhausting challenge, I will think of Mom. She raised four kids and made it look easy, then took over day care of her grandchildren while my brothers and sister worked, even raising one of them. She now cares for my great-nephews, 2 and 4. Jen will be the first grandchild not in her care because we live too far away.
It will be Jen's loss and is already my sorrow.
When I tell Jenifer about being honest in the little things, too, I will tell her how Mom and I walked two miles back to a store to pay for a pair of socks. She'd put them on to try on shoes and forgot about them.
There's a downside to waiting until you're almost 40 to have a baby. My brother, almost two years older than me, got a daughter-in-law just days before I got a daughter.
While social scientists agree that women my age are more mature, more settled and serene and capable of caring for a child, there are things they don't say. With time comes knowledge of how scary the world can be. I'm much more aware of the dangers that my baby may face.
I'm aware of other things, too. I no longer have the delusions that because she is my mother and I love her - I need her - she will always be here. I see her mortality and it frightens me.
I know that the present is priceless. That's re-emphasized as I watch how fast my tiny child grows and changes.
Today is a gift, and I know how I want to spend it - watching my mother love my daughter. I am grateful to be the bridge that links their generations.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom.