When I was 12 my Mother did an extraordinary thing for me, one that I shall always hold in my heart and treasure. Twelve was a very rough year, full of lessons on being truthful, first crush, first bra, becoming a woman. I don't know much about how others discovered how they had changed. I do know that I was in 6th grade and the proof was on the chair at my desk at school.
Once home I received the 'birds and the bee's' lecture, with sex being left right out of it. Just how my body had changed, and what it meant. ( oh yeah, it DID mean about 30 years of extreme pain each month--something that my Mother never went through, so she did not understand, but that is another story.)
What I felt when told the news? Well, I guess some small excitement that I was growing up, but not much more than that. The mood swings of PMS had just begun...poor everyone in my family.
I was not permitted to flounce about pouting, nor curl into a ball and sniffle, that was not my Mother's way. She grew up in a strict household where you toughed it out, no bitching allowed. So puberty was just something dealt with in silence after the initial explanation. And mood swings? They were there, but definitely not permitted. I went to school on those bad days and just suffered through it, especially since it was well before Ibuprofen was even imagined. If aspirin did not fix it, too bad, so sad.
Shortly after my transformation from kid to teenager my Mother did do something that really left it's mark. I shuffled off to school, spent my day as the class brain/goody two shoes, and climbed back onto the bus.
When I got home I trudged as only a teenager can down the hall to my room.
I opened the door and....stood there with my mouth wide open. In a day, my Mother had single handed redecorated my room from little girl to preteen. The walls were painted, the dresser was freshly painted, my twin bed had become two twins, new bedspreads, curtains and a poster on the wall. (this was 1972 so the poster was a 'Mod" a young girl in bell bottoms) How my mother did all this without me knowing I will never understand, it will remain forever a mystery. But it was her way of providing me a rite of passage. Showing me that this was a new phase in my life, something to be excited about.
I miss my Mom every day since she left us. She is carried with me in my heart as I go about living my life. What she had taught me, what she had shared, shaped who I became and still does. When I write on my blog, I am sitting at a desk that she gave me when I was ten, so I guess it could be considered an antique, lol, like me. This desk has been many colors, most of which my Mother did. On that day it was a lime green, then a fun lavender, and later became a soft yellow. Her last transformation was a walnut stain, and so it remains. I am reminded daily what she did out of love. I can only hope that I can be as loving as she was to everyone. I know I do not come close, but I do try, and I hope she can look down from heaven and be proud of me.
k
