My very first memory is of a smiling face leaning down at me with hair surrounding her head like a halo.

That was my mom leaning into my crib. I think I was about six months old. My mom was everything to me. She would walk into the room, and I'd feel instantly happier. When I was three, my brother's twin died, and my mother became devastated. She couldn't sleep, and her doctors put her on drugs to help her. She didn't react well to the drugs; it was as if she left us for awhile. That's when my eldest sister, Jane, who was eight-years-old filled in as "Alternate Mom.". Jane was very caring to me and my brothers and sister. This made her sure for the rest of our lives that she would always "know better" than we did. Or at least, she knows better than me. Or maybe that's always what older sisters do. They have lived longer. They usually are smarter by default.

My mother was still my mother though. I remember her patiently teaching me how to read when I was five. We didn't have many books, so her artistic side leapt in. She created hand drawn flash cards for me. I remember the beautiful big red apple for "A." It wasn't long after I knew my ABC's that I got school-envy. I wanted to walk off each morning to read books like my siblings.
I remember my mother asking, "Do you want to go to school or do you want to stay here with me?"
" Yes! I want to go!" I was so excited.
A single tear escaped her eye before she quickly looked away. She didn't want me to be discouraged by her broken heart. It was the first time I didn't want her.
She wanted me. I was her golden haired, good, little girl. She called me her "Little Dutch Girl" because with my cereal bowl haircut, I looked like the boy on the can of paint? (My mother really did put a bowl on my head to cut my hair.) But now, I was leaping off of that first step. I was going to school.
I wasn't the best student. I was the first, first grader to carve her name in her desk. My eldest brother said I was a "juvinile delinquent." I couldn't help it. The things they taught, I already knew. All the girls chased the boys and kissed them. I ran fast, so I did the catching. The kissing part didn't really become interesting till Highschool when one of the teachers became my boyfriend.

When I was 19, that same boyfriend asked my parents if he could marry me, and my mom cried. She didn't want me to leave. She thought I was too young. She was right, she’s always right, but I wasn't listening to that woman!

Teenagers are a different breed of animal. I often think that they could easily scare a tattooed, hardened, criminal in steel toed, combat boots while he was holding 20 hand grenades. My mother survived 7 "criminal freaking kids"...uh, teenagers.
And I was one of them.

It was only after my first daughter was born that I was sure I wanted to move back in under my mother's sheltering arms. Or at least, I wanted to do the laundry at her place besides, you got dinner with the clean wash. I would get a glass of milk and see dirty dishes or cluttered shelves and say, "Tch, Mom, you should clean this up!"
or "Mom, do you know that this bread company is contributing to bombs?"
The idea of Mom needing help escaped me. I didn't notice how worn out she was. The fact that she was keeping house for our "What's for dinner?" dad and my four "That's Woman's Work" brothers, didn't seem to makes it way into my brain.
I was so full of useful valid superior information. My mom was so dumb.
It took my mother about six months of water bills and extra meals to get the courage up to say, "I am not your laundromat!" I couldn't believe it. My mother didn't want me!

It was about that time that we moved out of town, and I couldn't torture and mooch off of my mom any longer.
Man, I missed her.

Our long distance phone bill could have been a very valid reason for divorce, if it wasn't so much that Fred and I weren't right for each other. But we took our time figuring that out. Twenty-three fun-filled years.

Soon enough I had my own teenagers that were convinced I did not know anything. To make matters worse, I did do things that were oddly stupid. Like pronouncing "Rengstorff Avenue" wrong. For some reason, every time I would try and say "Rengstorff" I would pronounce it Reng-GA- Storff."
That drove my kids nuts, which is kind of satisfying in retrospect. I drove on Rengstorff a lot too. "Oh, Look. Here's Reng - GA - Storff."Actually, reflecting back, I stopped doing that mispronouncing thing the day I left my ex.

It was like - immediately - my mind worked better.

Huh.
Interesting.

Anyway, I left my ex, and I thought my children would want to be with me. Want to visit me. Want to share my new life.
They didn't for almost a year.

Suddenly, I had this HUGE whole burned into the middle of my chest. And I remembered my mom crying when I moved out of town.
It was so hard to loose all three of my children at once. Once again, I was calling my mother to tearfully cry about my broken heart.

But...it was of course, a good thing. I learned how to live without my children as all mothers must. But, knowing other mother's in China and elsewhere have similar problems does not make it any easier to learn that my children had their own lives to live...without me.

Gradually they have come to know the new reinvention of me that I have created in the last 7 years. I think it's more me.

Uh, that is not a comment about my weight though I am "Fluffy."

For a while they had a hard time liking this new incarnation of their mother.
I would say to my husband, Glenn, "Why won't they visit me? Why won't they talk to me?"
And he'd say, "Uh, when you were in your twenties did you want to hang out and talk with your mom?"
Suddenly, I remembered thinking how dumb my mom was.
" Oh...yeah."

Sometimes, I miss them fiercely. I think of my children, and I want to hold them and have them tell me about their lives. I want to hear that they are on the right track. I want to know that I didn't do too bad of a job, and that what I did that was wrong? Well, I want to know that I've taught them enough, so that they can overcome it.

Just like my mom did.

Thanks Mom. I'm going to call you this week. I know it will make me feel instantly happier.

Love, Carol

Now, fine folks, your job, if you choose to accept it, is to email Carol Wood at Carol@hazelst.com And tell her your mom story.

(Can't you just hear the Mission Impossible music?)do, do, do....