“Make me a nest in the branches of your arms.” – Gary Boehlhower
I thought of these words as I went through the photos Tim took on Sunday at my mom’s 90th birthday party. This photo of my mom with her 3-month-old great granddaughter, Rosie is one my favorite pictures. Rosie is held in her great nana’s arms with so much love.
When I first told my mom we were going to have a 90th birthday party for her she kept saying, “keep it small, just family.” But she also kept giving me more names to add to the guest list. Together we went through her address book. Her handwriting has always been hard to read and with age it has gotten worse. I needed her to decipher as I typed names and addresses into an excel spread sheet. I also couldn’t help but notice how many names had been crossed off, nearly half of the names in her book were x out. You lose a lot of folks when you live to be 90.
In the end we invited close to 100 people. So many said yes! Family and friends traveled from Seattle, Phoenix and Warroad. There was her best friend Marlys, they had been friends from first grade. There were doctors and nurses she had worked with in her long nursing career as an oncology nurse. There were old neighbors from her house on Glenhurst Avenue where she had lived for over 60 years. There were folks from her church including her two pastors who she adores. And there were her new friends from her apartment building, her cribbage and bridge buddies. She has held a lot of people in the nest of her love over these 90 years.
Because there were so many yeses to the invitations, I asked her if we could cater her party. She agreed. I told her that we are going to have great food since folks are coming from so far. Her only worry was that there would be enough. She wanted some leftovers too. We made sure there was plenty. She loved to tease me that I loved spending her money. I told her, “Yep, for this. At your funeral I’ll just have coffee and cookies.”
My mom has lived a very active life. She still is. On the day before her party, I knocked on her door, but she didn’t answer. It was noon and I had told her we would be there with our cousins, and we were bringing lunch. Where the heck was she? I knocked again. Crap, what if something happened? The huge party was tomorrow.
I told my husband, Tim, “Let’s go look in the gym.” Yep, there she was on the treadmill, getting in her daily steps. “Mom, you terrified me.” She smiled. She had forgotten the time. “Motion is lotion”, she quipped.
She has kept walking, moving thru the hardest of times with grace. She cared for so many people living with cancer. She cared for our dad, her beloved John, icing his head during chemo so he wouldn’t lose his beautiful curly hair. It worked but the chemo didn’t. She was widowed at 48 but still she kept moving and loving.
She was there when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, moving in during my chemo weeks to help out with our young daughters. She was there doing the laundry, cleaning, and driving them to ballet or soccer or wherever they needed to be. And then she did it again 10 years later when my sister-in-law was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Ironically and painfully, her and my brother’s daughters were the same age as our girls were when I was diagnosed. Mom was the laundry queen for us all. And it helped in so many ways.
“With all the green threads of hope in the fine weave of your body, make me a nest in the branches of your arms. Make it warm against the storm.”
When I called my mom after getting back to Duluth after her party, I asked her if she had been resting. I assumed that she would be exhausted. “Not yet, I’ve been busy” she said. She had been breaking up all the bouquets of flowers she had gotten and making smaller ones out of them. She had then delivered them to some of her neighbors. I guess motion really is lotion. . . .keep on going Mom.
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