Mom, my gift to you...

My birthday gift to you is:

The way I clean bathrooms.  I get down on the floor and clean around the toilet bowl.  Someday, some woman’s head is going to get awfully close to this bowl and I want that experience to be as comforting and sanitary as possible. When I really want the mirror to shine I use newspaper to wipe the glass because you taught me to use newspaper.

The way I try with my kids.  It would be easier to put away all the dishes on my own and faster, but I want them to value “clean” and value “work” and I want them to contribute to our home, so I allow the process to be both sloppier and slower so that my children learn to participate.  Even when our home was not at its best, you continued to try to get us to help out around the house and now I try to get my kids to do the same.

The way I listen in church.  I believe that I can have a spiritual experience every time I go to church, so I lean in to listen to speakers and teachers when my children allow a few uninterrupted moments.  You always loved church and you always seemed to have thoughts about what the speakers said or didn’t say.  I knew you were listening when we attended church together growing up, so now I listen.

The way I sing around the house.  You love to sing and even though you are not loud about it or showy, I have strong memories of hearing you sing and watching you practice on the piano.  Anna doesn’t like it when I sing, if it’s not silly, but I love to sing, and I often think about you when I do.

The way I try to have family dinner time every night.  Dinner time is sacred and I try to have all of us sitting around the table for a short time every night enjoying a meal together. Dinner time is worth sacrificing other things for, and I know this, because despite all the odds against it—you were able to make family dinner time happen almost every day of my childhood.  I loved being able to ask you what was for dinner and knowing that you would have a response.  Dinner time was planned, it was prepared for, and I looked forward to it.

The way I bake with my daughter.  You were always open to us helping out in the kitchen and cooking with you.  I remember the chocolate chip cookie recipe you got from a neighbor and the handwritten notes in the margins for quadrupling the batch.  I remember that you only liked to have 3 or 4 chocolate chips per cookie.  Now it is my daughter who is sneaking chocolate chips straight from the bag…okay, so it is the both of us.  And you always loved new recipes.  You had a drawer full of clipped recipes from newspapers and magazine articles.  I would sometimes pore over those recipes and plan elaborate dinners and desserts that I would never make.  Now I have my own cupboard full of cookbooks and I still flip to the back of any magazine first to see what kind of recipes they have.

The way we have family home evening and scripture study.  Even when things were chaotic, you would try to hold family home evening and morning scripture study.  Now I too struggle with little wiggly kids and trying to get 5 minutes together to read a few scriptures or to have a song and a prayer.  But I keep trying, because you always tried, and because that is what I want for my family.

The way I voice my opinions.  I have always appreciated what a strong woman you are and how you speak up when something isn’t right or when you disagree with something. 

The way I want to garden and make my home beautiful.  Last summer you taught me to put flowers in the ground and they grew.  Last night I stayed out in our yard late and pulled weeds and felt such satisfaction kneeling there and yanking out the grasses and dandelions and sinister blackberry tendrils.  I didn’t have on gloves but I didn’t mind.  I didn’t mind the slugs and worms and bugs and beetles and centipedes.  Now my fingernails have dirt underneath them and they smell like dirt and grass.  They look like your hands.

The way I love the mornings.  You have always been a morning person, preferring the still and quiet of the new day to the bustle at the end of it.  You always cherished a few moments alone during those early morning hours.  As a missionary I did the same—getting up before my companion so I could sit next to the window and listen to the rain.  Even now, when my children don’t force it, I love to choose to start my morning early.

Happy Birthday mom!  So much of what I am and what I do is because of what I observed in you and the example you set for me.