Snowballs And Lilacs—real Great Mother

By Author: allan
Total Articles: 366
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I set the big, manila envelope on my mother's table, continuing our ordinary conversation, trying to draw away from the importance of this package and its contents. Through sentences of chit--chat, worked up the courage from within, until I finally asked her to open it. She did, with a Norwegian sparkle in her blue eyes, expecting a surprise. She grew quiet as she pulled out the picture inside, and saw my own dark brown eyes staring back at her in the face of another woman. The resemblance was startling, and realization swept across her face as she turned to me with joy and wonder and whispered, "Is this your real mother?"

Biting my lip, a trick I had learned from her to hold back; the tears, realized this wonderful woman of substance in front of me had never seemed more precious than at this moment. A flash of all the years she had spent caring for my| brothers and me flickered through my mind, as well as the life she led — a life that knew no other way than to put her children and others first on a daily basis. With the knowledge of what was truly "real," I answered her with borrowed wisdom and responded, "Yes, ...
... it's a picture of my birth mother."

My search for her had been a need for self-fulfillment, to answer all those nagging questions once wondered. My inquiry had brought feelings of guilt as well. Although my parents had always encouraged me to look, saying that they were just as curious, didn't want either one of them to be hurt in the process, or to think that I loved them any less. I secretly marveled at their encouragement, and the confidence that it represented in my steadfast love for them. But after a lifetime of unconditional love and bonding, they had well earned that security.

My mother's eyes saddened as I told her that my birth mother had died; both my mother and I had often hoped for the day when we would be able to thank her personally. Now that connection would never come. On Memorial Day, I took my two young sons to the cemetery to place flowers on my birth mother's grave. We first stopped at the gravesides of my grandparents. My mother had obviously been there, having left her homemade bouquet of snowballs and lilacs — an annual tradition of hers.

Year after year, I had found comfort in those flowers, always there, loved ones always remembered. They reminded me of my mother in their simple but God-given beauty. I smiled as I thought of the daffodils she gave me each birthday —one for each year of my life. When I was younger, Mom's time-honored yellow tradition had been taken for granted. Now at the age of thirty-five, counted each one, each flower so significant. Nothing would make me happier than to adopt a little girl and continue that tradition with her.