Let them see you do good or they may never know how to do it themselves

We had just had the need vs want conversation for the zillionth the time.  They wanted the fancy cotton candy milk.  I said that's a want and we're not doing that kind of shopping today.  They tested me by pointing out the coffee flavor milk.  Would I be a hypocrite?  Of course not.  I again reminded them that I don't need coffee flavored milk, coffee flavored coffee is of course another matter.  So we made it all the way to the checkout line with only a cart full of vegetables, protein & plain old cow udder flavored milk.  Our needs met and my paycheck mostly gone, we declared ourselves victors!

In line in front of us was a familiar face.  A guy I had seen a few times at the bank who was always so very sweet and friendly to me.  He had a young boy no more than six years old at his side.  I don't think he noticed us at all, but I immediately remembered how nice it had been to see his smiling face on the days that tended to drag me through the muck of cranky at my former job.  

I heard him say, "I only have $50 on this card, so we won't get that stuff."  Still with that genuine smile, he gave the cashier his gift card and left the several boxes of jello pudding on the conveyor belt.  His son, only two years behind my baby girl, looked disappointed but didn't once even consider throwing a fit about leaving behind the only treat they'd chosen. The gentleman grabbed his two small bags of groceries and kindly thanked the cashier.

And I knew it wasn't much, but I couldn't just do nothing.

"Sofia, will you do me a favor?" 

"Yeah."

"We're going to buy that stuff the people in front of us couldn't afford, but I don't want to embarrass him.  So, I need you to run the bag out there as soon as I pay for it."

I quietly asked the cashier to pull the boxed pudding out from under the counter.  

"That's very sweet of you."

"No.  It's really just a tiny thing."

Sofia took the bag out and came back to the cash register quietly smiling.  

"He said thank you very much, mama."

Another daughter asked why I did it.  

As we walked our own groceries out, I explained.

That guy was always nice to me.  We had talked about his struggles to raise his son on his own.  He had never once complained about how hard it is.  And, an opportunity to put a smile on a kid's face is never one you should pass up.  Who doesn't smile at pudding?!

But I thought we were only doing needs right now - that's what you said.

Yep.  But sometimes we just need to do nice things for nice people.  One day I might not be able to make you dessert.  We'd want someone to help us.

My girls want for a lot.  They don't have the newest, nicest clothes.  They don't carry the shiniest gadgets or the name brand purses.  But they get pudding when they want it.

And, today with our little $4 donation, they gave a sweet little boy and his humble dad the chance to smile even wider.

So, here's to the dad that had to make some hard choices, but chose correctly.  Here's to the man who didn't take his money to the beer aisle, but put food on his son's table instead.  Here's to the little boy who's learning to sacrifice without letting it hurt.  And, here's to my three luckies who not once mentioned that I could've used that $4 to buy cotton candy milk instead.

The opportunities to teach right are always there. Take them and enjoy the pudding.

Confronting ghosts

She had been a giant.  Cast a huge shadow over every piece of light I tried to filter.  Directed and produced every imagined scenario for years after I last heard her voice.  She had been a battering ram in my glass house.

But not this day.  All that's left now is a shrunken, broken mosaic of anger, sadness and confusion. Still refracting my light while no longer controlling the scene.

That's what I'm left with two weeks after meeting my mother for the first time since she couldn't remember my face.

Before this starts to sound like some sort of tragic Nicholas Sparks novel, let me just say that she did this.  My mother isn't of an advanced age or suffering from some horrible fate of fate's design.  To save time, and a story that I may never be ready to share, let it just be known that her condition is entirely of her own making.  Pity her if you must, but she chose Jack Daniels over her responsibilities.  Worse - she chose numbing the present over knowing the future, and my girls deserved more.  The sole purpose of me walking into the facility where she will live out her days in comfort was to get out the words that might give me a little of my own.  

But first we had to meet.

From the end of the hall and around the corner where the nurse had disappeared, three people slowly came into view - two nurses and a small, round figure in between.  As soon as she saw me, she started yelling that she didn't know me.  

It had been nine years since we'd last spoken.  In that time, she had gone from living in a big house she didn't own and pretending to be the wife of a man who didn't love her - through several sinkholes of her own creation - into a nursing home in a condition I can best describe as what lies at the end of the road you pave with a child you abandon and grandchildren you forgot while you pour yourself another drink of self pity.

And she didn't believe that it was me.  Though, to be fair, if I hadn't been warned about what to expect, I may not have recognized her either.  Smaller than I remember, I suddenly couldn't recall why she scared me anymore.  

Over the next hour, I answered the questions she repeated and waited through her yelling at me for things I wouldn't try to understand.  Sometimes it felt like she was inches away from the woman whose messes my childhood hands had tried to mop, but she always faded back before I got a real look.  Her broken heart, the one I had spent so many years trying to glue together, almost appeared to be back in my grasp moments before she'd wander off again.

Finally, I realized why I was there.  

"They're good girls.

You would've liked them.

Sofia is a nerd and she's beautiful and special and smart.

Eva is an athlete and she's sweet and good and everything I could ask for.

Maya is my queen.  She's daring and freaking funny and three handfuls in one.

They're good girls.

I'm a good mom."

I had spent weeks trying to decide why I was going, trying to figure out if I even had anything to say to her.  Sitting in the well lit dining room of a place where she comfortably forgets our existence, I wanted to tell her that I did fine.  Turns out I didn't need her at all.  

And, though my grandmother in heaven would've never allowed me to say those words to her daughter, I knew she gave me permission to tell her in my own way.

You chose you, mom.  I choose them.

And we are fine for it.

I made it to the car before I cried.  I got my breath back before I made it back to the girls.  It took two weeks, but I finally put words to the healing.

And ten minutes after I left, she wouldn't have remembered my face again.

But I'm ok, mom.  

Paving my own road with real memories and undiluted love.

We're just fine.