Yesterday I finish the first draft of my May Everlasting, ALWAYS A MOTHER. Yay for me! The story is about a forty-three year old woman facing an unplanned pregnancy. Her other two children are grown and she has a hard time handling the thought of starting over at her age.
As I wrote this book I thought about mothers and all the love they give their children, and the sacrifices given out of that love. It also made me think about my mom and her unconditional love my brothers and I took for granted. I thought about a lot of things that made me tear up, but I also thought about the funny things, thing that made us laugh.
I was married when my mom went through menopause. My dad’s theory was to humor her and it would go away. He had an Archie Bunker attitude. Remember the episode where Archie said, “Edith, I’m going to snap my fingers and I want you to change.” Well, my dad did a lot of silent snapping of his fingers.
I remember one time vividly. She’d invited us for Sunday dinner. My mom was a great cook. You could gain five pounds by breathing the smell in her kitchen. That day she made chicken fried steak with all the trimmings. Well, almost. My baby brother and nephew were there, too, and we sat down to eat. My dad looked at the food on the table and asked, “Where’s the gravy?”
Mom replied, “I wasn’t in the mood for gravy.”
My dad looked at us, his eyebrows knotted together. I was trying to give him a look that said just let it go, but it didn’t work.
“How in the $$$$ are we supposed to eat chicken fried steak without gravy?” he snapped.
“With a fork,” she said, and got up and went to the refrigerator and brought back ketchup. She plopped it onto the table without a word and took her seat.
We all waited for what my dad would do. He grabbed the bottle and mumbled, “I’ll be glad when this is over.”
We laughed a lot about that dinner over the years and I always wished I could have helped my mom more during that time. I was young, though, and didn’t quite understand the emotional upheaval she was going through. Boy, I do now. Women are saints, I tell you. So here’s to mothers everywhere. And may you always have gravy with you chicken fried steak.
Or not.
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5 comments:
Linda, This was just priceless,gave me a good laugh for today,thanks. Unfortunately,my family said my menopause lasted at least 10 years from which they are still trying to recover. Must be I inherited it all as my mother & grandmothers passed through this phase very quietly. It is good to see you here & I am waiting for your book. Thanks to Roz for telling me about this site,I am enjoying it just as I enjoy this line of books. Thank you again,Cheryl Robertson
Hi Cheryl,
Wow! Its so good to see you here! I'll have to give Roz a hug. I hope you're loving the Everlasting books. They are so great.
There are some loves that last a lifetime and I enjoy reading about them. We're hoping readers will, too.
And, Cheryl, my dad swears my mom's menopause lasted 10 years too. My parents were married 57 years and as I wrote Always a Mother it brought back so many memories of them. I still miss them.
Linda
Linda, I got a good laugh about your Mom and her response to your Dad. I reall haven't had mood swings, but I am hot all the time. My husband swear's you can hang meat in our house.
Hi Sheila,
Oh my goodness. With my mom I don't remember her being hot. The moods swings are what I remember the most.
But me, that's a different story. I go to sleep fine, but then I wake up hot and sweaty and all the covers come off. I go back to sleep and then wake up cold, grabbing for covers. My husband just growls, "What are you doing now?"
Heck, I don't know because I'm supposed to be past menopause. I'm stuck on pause I think.
Keep that air-conditioning turned up.
Fun blog! We keep our house very cold and moving air with fans in addition to the AC. I have always loved the cold even before menopause. I don't sleep well but I get a lot of reading done now in the wee hours of the night. OK, this is really weird but I discovered that one very odd thing helps the nightly lack of temperature control that is the last thing I ever would have expected! Heat! One night it was snowing during last year's blizzard and I was still hot and kept turning the heat down and opening the windows but I just could not sleep or get cool. It got too cold for my dh so we turned the heat up and presto, I slept like a baby. I have done the same thing, not for the momentary flashes, but the general kind of hot flash and it works every time. Weird.
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