As the sparks fly upwards

by chuckofish

Today is my mother’s birthday–she would have been 98! She died almost 36 years ago.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and miss her. She lived one of those “hidden lives” George Eliot wrote about. I know she sometimes lamented that her life had not amounted to much. I tried to cheer her up by reminding her, as only a self-centered child can, that she had three handsome, healthy, smart children to be proud of. That didn’t really help.

I thought I knew my mother pretty well. But I’m not so sure I did. I spent a lot of time with her; we were together a lot. I think she listened to me a lot, and she hardly ever argued–only occasionally countering a really stupid statement made by me. Her generation was advised not to inflict their ideas on their children, to let them decide for themselves what was right. (That worked out well, didn’t it?) The times they were a-changin’ and it was scary for parents. Really scary. I know she worried plenty about her children, especially when we went off to college. She worried about my brother for a solid ten years.

My mother was cut off from her family and her New England roots once she and my father settled for good in Missouri. We visited them occasionally. Her parents visited us once. Her sisters each visited once. Back then the phone was only for emergencies. She never really made friends in her new hometown. This is not to say she didn’t try. But it was an unwelcoming community in which we dwelled. She only had us and we were not enough. Not to be overly dramatic, but isolation kills.

This was a hard lesson to learn, but I learned it. We humans need community. So find a church and start going every week. Make that your new year’s resolution. Make a new friend. Call an old friend. Stay in the game.

Well, that turned serious. Sorry. But I have been reading Job.

For affliction does not come from the dust,
    nor does trouble sprout from the ground,
but man is born to trouble
    as the sparks fly upward.

–Job 5:6-7