Happy 83rd birthday, Mom!

My parents on my wedding day. This month they celebrate 61 years together.

Every year when my wisteria explodes in purple, my thoughts turn to my mom, whose birthday we celebrate just as everything blooms. Sometimes, like last year, her special day even falls on Easter. So Easter and spring especially bring her to mind.

As a kid, I  sometimes spent my piggy bank's contents on a corsage for her to wear to church. And I'm not talking about the nice kind with real flowers. (What could be nicer than a gift that reeks of plastic?) The woman who had a gift for growing the real stuff, from irises to hydrangeas—we called them "snowballs"—would wear the fake ones proudly.

As a fourth- or fifth-grader, I was sitting next to her during a church service one Sunday when I dropped the communion blood as it passed. To my horror, it spilled all over my black-and-white dress-coat before its container tumbled to the floor with a deafening noise. Mom never flinched. The stain destroyed the coat, (she had five children to clothe, mind) but she added no chiding to my humiliation. No tsk. Not even a sigh. She simply received the elements and passed them as if she believed in this thing called grace she was celebrating.

The dawning realization of what great parents I had/have continued during my senior year of high school. Caring for four kids overnight on a weekend babysitting gig, I had two little boys and two girls with some defiance issues—or so I thought. Long after I reached my limit and resorted to screaming, I called Mom, who dropped everything to help. Once she came to the rescue, she gently lifted one of the boys up onto the counter and patiently helped him tie his shoes. I watched in wonder as she spoke cheerful words in response to his chattering. His every "Why?" she answered with calm, even delight. His insisting to know "Why? Why? Why?" as it turned out, was not defiance at all. He was exhibiting normal curious behavior, and the very questions that had driven my sanity from me seem to evoke joy in her. I never told her, but I realized in that moment I had hit the jackpot.

Once when my own daughter was about a year old and she had fussed and cried most of the day, I called Mom seeking empathy, knowing she had experienced much worse. She could have easily said, "You think that's bad....?" but I knew she wouldn't. "How did you handle five kids under the age of six when I can hardly handle one?" I asked. She replied with love in her voice: "Sometimes you just sit down and cry with the baby."

The opening and closing chapters of the Book of Proverbs personify wisdom as a woman. Chapter 31 concludes with, "Her children rise up to bless her.... Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised." Indeed, she will.

Happy birthday, Mom!