The Question

Parents are people.  If a person is lucky, there comes a day when they see their parents as people.  It’s not a question of having a parent that is more like a friend than a parent because, let’s face it, a parent needs to be able to parent.  It’s a question of the freedom that a child gets and that a child gives when they recognize that their parent is more.  They were a person at the beginning, they will be a person at the end, and one of the (hopefully, but not always, good) things that they did between the two inexorable bookends that are the beginning and the end was to become a parent.  As people, those parents have thoughts and feelings, hopes and wishes, complications and interruptions, dreams and desires that belong, solely, to them.

I was lucky enough to see that my parents were people, in all their flawed humanity, from a very early age.

A few years ago… it wasn’t five but it might have been ten, possibly even twelve… I was home visiting My Mam and Pap and, one day, I decided to ask Mama the blunt question.  

“Did you miss out on anything?”

A woman who does not operate from a place of ignorance, Me Mother asked for clarity in my question.

“Did you have dreams of your own?  Did you have to give anything up?  Did you miss out on anything in your life, so that you could be Daddy’s wife and our mother?”

There was a time, earlier in my life, when my Mother may have spoken with immediacy but, over the years, she became a person who did not speak without, first, considering all the facts.  On this day, she waited a few moments - not many, but a few - before saying, simply but not dismissively, “Oh, I don’t know.”

And that was that.

It is my custom, when arriving at the Mosher Family Homestead, to take off my shoes and walk in the grass of Me Father’s meticulously manicured garden, and, on my last day, before leaving for the airport, to spend a few minutes out back, enjoying the smells and the sights of the Southern skies.  A few days later, my trip drawing to its close, I was sitting on the back patio, simply absorbing the sight of Daddy’s wonderful horticultural efforts, when I heard the back door of the house open and close.  With a creak, the thick wooden door swung wide, and, with a thunk, it slid into the jamb, whilst the flimsy screen door just sort of wiggled unimpressively in the wind.  Moments later, I felt the unmistakable touch of My Mam as she hugged me from behind, over the shoulders, around the neck, leaning forward so that the skin of her right cheek rested gently against that of my left.  It was a feeling I had felt so many times that it was still there when she was not.  It was a feeling that I feel today.

“You asked me if I missed out on anything.”

“Yes.”

“The answer is no.   I got the life that I wanted.”

I knew there would be an answer.  I also knew that she just needed the time to find it inside of her.