Missing Mom.

I've been searching through my blogs to see if I've reported this before. I've written too many and not labeled them well enough. So, pardon me, dear readers, if I repeat myself.

I went to dinner with my dad tonight. Can't go on Friday's anymore, I have a show. We got to talking about my mom, gone 6 years now. I told Dad something my brother-in-law told me I've mentioned here before, "The hurt never goes away, we just get used to it." My dad said, "The hurt is worse now. I'm really hurting. I miss her." Makes me cry, just writing this. He has been so stoic and seemed to be entering a new chapter in his life. I think, with his turning 85 this year, his girlfriend (she is 70 something) just doesn't know enough about him. (I suspect he has more than one.) Sure, she is fun and likable, but what he misses is the depth my mother brought to their relationship. My mother truly changed his life for the better. He was 23 when he married her. (I've been with my husband since I was 21.) They were life long friends and partners. (Just like my dear man and I.) We learn from our parents. It is apparent. (Okay, I'm sorry for the very bad pun.)

Just lately, in my dreams my mother is alive. Until a couple of months ago, when I dreamt about her she was always dead. But now... she lives again. I don't know why. Maybe I miss her more, just like my dad.

Everyone called her Kit. (Sometimes "Kitty".) Her name was Martha Kathryn. Only her parents and her sisters called her Kathryn. Nobody ever called her Martha. In the Navy, Kathryn was shortened to Kit and it stuck. (My sister's name is Suzanne Dedie. NO one called her Suzanne. We only ever called her Dedie. Don't know why.)

I've been reminiscing about my mother of late. She used to carry around a pocket-full of dollar bills. When I was little, if one of us got hurt and cried, she'd come over and pat us and say, "Oh, I'm sorry you are hurt. Here's a dollar." She'd then hand us a one dollar bill and oddly, we felt better. I think it was because we thought it was so funny! As my niece would say, "That's so random!"

Mom was also very deaf and any word she learned after she went deaf she pronounced phonetically. My friends are constantly correcting my pronunciation of some words. Well, if my mom said them with her understanding, that is what I learned. Pollo, Spanish for chicken. How do you thing a deaf person, speaking English would pronounce that? Exactly. Wrong. So I say pollo, not poyo. Armageddon. Ar-mag-ed-don. If you can't hear it pronounced, how can you know it is said arm-ag-ged-don. See what I mean? So I gleefully go through life, smart and educated, understanding all the big words but mispronouncing many. Ah well. Thanks mom, for making me smart and making me sound stupid. Keeps me humble.

Makes me laugh.

Makes me miss her. My mom sang in key every song she learned before she went deaf. (She started going deaf at 24.) After that... yikes! Luckily, she'd learned all the songs kids want to hear before that.

Here is one of her bedtime songs to us.

"She sailed away, on a happy summer day, on the back of a crocodile.

You see said he, "I'm as tame as tame could be, I'll sail you down the Nile."

The croc winked his eye, as she waved them all goodbye, wearing a happy smile.

At the end of the ride, the lady was inside and the smile was on the crocodile!"

An indication of my mother's sense of humor.

She'd then say, "Now, go to sleep!"

God, I miss her.