Thanks Mom.

My wife mentioned something to me the other day that I had never thought about. She was trimming the dead leaves off one of our house plants and told me that this was the original planter, dirt, and roots that came from my mother, who died over 20 years ago. That’s a simple, unplanned connection to the past. My mother didn’t buy this small plant with the idea of passing it on to her one, immediate descendant. No, it was just one of the houseplants that remained after her rather sudden death. It was a remnant, an after-thought, just a plant in an empty apartment that needed to be cleared out by the end of the month. Thankfully, my wife had the foresight to save it.

Most of our connections with the past are like that. Yes, there are statues and plaques and other memorials to help us remember those that went before us, but most of our “memorials” are old plants, old dishes, old pictures, old tools. Stuff that you find in the attic.

And, of course, memories.

One odd memory that sticks with me is my mother’s habit of reaching over to hold me back every time she suddenly hit the brakes. In the days before seat belt laws, my mother made it a habit of protecting me from injury by reaching across and putting her hand on my chest. She continued to do that all of her life, even when I was nearly 30. At the time, I was embarrassed by it, but now I think of it fondly – a mama protecting her child to the very end. Car seats and seat belts have eliminated this endearing reflex from our culture, and although I know our children are now safer in their seats and belts, I still mourn the loss of such an obvious sign of love and protection.

One of my vivid, childhood memories involves the Smoky Mountains. I was about five years old, and my mother and I were traveling from our home in Florida to visit relatives and friends in Ohio. Because there were only a few interstates at that time, we generally drove US 441 from Orlando through Georgia, western North Carolina, and most importantly, through the Smokies. This was my first real road trip, and it was all great because it was all new and different. But the highlight, by far, was the night that we parked our Studebaker in a small, gravel pull-out next to the Oconaluftee River in Cherokee, NC. We slept in the car that night with the wild, relentless sound of the river filling our heads. (Florida’s rivers don’t make noise.) It took me a long time to fall asleep. The sound of the river mesmerized me. That night by the river was magical… and probably illegal. Although, those were simpler times, so maybe there wasn’t yet a law against sleeping in your car on the side of the road.

Did I say that night by the river was the highlight? Well, it was the highlight of my life up to that point. Remarkably, the next highlight of my life came the next morning. How lucky can a kid be to have the two highlights of his 5 years of life happen within 12 hours of each other! That foggy, cool, early morning drive through the Smokies was a step into another, better world. It was love at first sight. I learned new place names as my mother showed me the Chimneys and took me to Cades Cove and Clingmans Dome, all places that I would visit many times as the years rolled by.

My mother wasn’t a very outdoorsy person in terms of camping, but she did love the outdoors enough to make sure that most of our family vacations involved America’s national parks. And somehow, some way her love of the outdoors managed to rub off on me. She and I never talked about that, and I don’t think I ever thanked her for it, but I think she must have realized that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Most of my family vacations now involve national parks – the same ones she took me to – but only in recent years have I come to see that as a memorial to her. Those times and places sunk deeply into who I am and were so important to me that I wanted my two kids to have those same, wonderful experiences: bears, buffalo, geysers, redwoods, birds, red rock canyons, deserts, mountains, cacti, rivers, even the long hours in the car watching the fields and farms pass by. I love them all, and I have my mother to thank. That love and those memories are an unwritten memorial to her.

Thanks Mom.