This Week's Song - Fire Escape by Andrew McMahon - because it is Nancy's favorite right now.
She was scared. The pain and anxiety in her stomach had her bent double. The school trip requiring her to travel away from her room, her home, her town, her animals and her family was too much. She was 11. The previous Summer, her father had to drive through the night to pick her up at a weekend camp in the upper East Tennessee mountains. She was homesick, her anxiety manifesting into physical illness. Now, facing an overnight trip further away, the sickness was back. Perhaps it was the normal fear of a sweet child so used to the comforts of home, so loved by so many. Perhaps it was an ordinary coming of age tale. Or, just perhaps, it was the fact her mother died when the little girl was only four. Separation was a big deal. More than likely, it was a little bit of all of the above. The bus was leaving the school at 8:00 a.m. for Charleston. Her class was staying overnight and returning the next evening. She worried until she was sick. She didn’t want to go, but she didn’t voice it. But, they knew. Her father knew. So did Nancy, the woman who married her father.
So, when the bus pulled from the school, a lone car followed it all the way to Charleston. The little girl who rode in the car told the woman who married her father that her tummy felt better. She’d long ago stopped being the woman who married her Daddy. She was "Mommy" and she'd earned it. The mother took the little girl to the field trip sites in Charleston, she stayed nearby in the shadows the entire day just in case she was needed. Even after she entrusted the little girl to her teachers and classmates, the woman spent the night in another hotel nearby. During the night she fielded phone calls from the little girl assuring her she was strong, that she was not sick, that she just a few miles and minutes away and that she loved her. There was always that - proclamations of love. Always.Shelby will turn 21 next month. After 2 years at the University of Tennessee, she moved to Idaho. Idaho. She calls her mother almost daily. She will be working in Washington this Summer. Washington. The state. Her family has not seen her since Christmas. She is flying, a young woman in charge of her future, confident where the path has led. She is looking for who she is without the fear of distance, the fear of separation, and without the fear of failure.
My little girl is a kite. Plenty of us take our turn holding the string, but only one of us taught her to fly.
The card arrived yesterday from Idaho. "Dear Mom...I know that without you, I wouldn't have the courage to take chances and live my life to the fullest." That pretty much says it. Nancy had two born unto her and inherited two born unto another. She has loved and nurtured them in equal measure. She has done so without depriving one of them of the love they each need, crave and deserve. She doesn't orchestrate their lives, she supplements and fosters the life each of them is meant to lead. Cori calls every day from Australia. The boys call upon her when there is a problem or opportunity to grow. Her shoulders are broad, her love is deep, and her capacity for it all is beyond comprehension. So on a day we celebrate mothers, I lift up the mother who has done more than just love her children - she has loved mine and made them her own. she has become their guide to the universe. She inherited a broken family and made one that is unbreakable, and she continues to teach all of us to fly. Happy Mother's Day.
