Ola!
It was a simple Facebook post I made on Mother’s Day. Write one word to describe your Mom. As you can imagine beautiful words came flooding in answering my request. Words like: amazing, wonderful, magnificent, remarkable and my personal favorite – irreplaceable. Yes, a Mother is really, really irreplaceable.
When I reflected on what word I would choose for my fabulous Mom, I was surprised when the word, ‘untapped’ came to my mind. I was even more surprised when I started to get emotional over my discovery.
The tears were a-flowing when I thought about my beautiful Mom stuck in situations for which there did not appear to be reprieve from. A victim of the times and circumstances she was born into. She did not do the things she would have loved to have done, she was not able to really bloom. What else might she have accomplished if she had been nurtured, encouraged, or maybe even brave enough to push past the limits put on her.
I thought about how often my Mom would say to me, “I can’t believe I ‘borned’ you!” She would always make me feel so great about the things I had done, accomplished, tried. She is always eager to praise me for qualities that perhaps she didn’t feel she had.
Suddenly it dawns on me that maybe I am my Mother’s ‘bloom.’ Perhaps I am living the life she might have lived given a different situation. Perhaps I am her, but her – bloomed! Perhaps that is why she gets so much joy living vicariously through me?
The thought of this excites me and I want to talk to her about it, but I don’t want to make her upset and I don’t know if it sounds crazy anyway. I stay quiet and continue to contemplate my hunch.
Weeks later we are having lunch together. I am telling her about Randy and I planning how to celebrate our upcoming 25th wedding anniversary. We are thinking of going to New Zealand or Australia for an extended holiday.
“That’s one thing I would have liked to have done she says, I would have loved to gone there.”
Interesting.
I decide now is as good a time as any to talk to her about my recent possible discovery. At first, she laughs and then she gets introspective and a bit emotional and finally she says, “Yes, you are me, ‘bloomed!’”
Now, I am eager to find out what else she would like to have done. At 86 now she is rather limited, but I am not. I tell her to think about what we could do either together or virtually together. This could be fun!
