Here are a few memories of my mom. We weren't distant when I was growing up but as a teenager I felt we were very different. I didn't always value my mother's ideas. I wouldn't say that I considered her my friend; my parent who loved me but not someone with whom I would choose to share my secrets. A few experiences changed that relationship. One was the night before I left on a mission for the LDS church. As I contemplated not seeing my family for a long time I began to cry in my bed. I couldn't stop. I felt so bereft. Then I felt my mother lay down on the bed beside me and her arms went around me. I cried myself to sleep with her arms around me. She felt like my friend that night.After my mission I got married. My first baby was born 4 years later and because of an accident in the womb with the umbilical cord she was full term and stillborn. It was a very painful time. My parents came. They held our baby. They held us. Then my dad went home and back to work but my mother stayed. She stayed with me for 6 weeks!!! I sustained some injury during the birth and was weak physically and emotionally. She helped me in and out of the bath when my husband was gone for school. She helped wrap my breasts when the milk came in to ease the pain. When I was ready she helped me pack up the nursery. I wrote in my journal, "My mother is the friend I never knew I had."One of the best compliments my mom ever received was from a friend who was visiting who remarked to my mother, "You are the only woman I know who can sit down in the middle of a mess and cut out paper dolls with her children." My mother recognized those words as the compliment they were intended to be and has cherished them. And so have I.
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