What my mother taught me:
When I was little, my first recollection of my mother was that she was a gypsy. Like, Esmerelda. She was beautiful. She had big, dark brown eyes, the kind that you kind of swam in, and the thickest most beautiful chestnut hair, the kind that tousled and tumbled over her shoulders. I would pull at the tendrils and run my fingers through her strands and she would laugh and squeeze me. There was a light in her face I couldn’t replicate. I would sit on her lap and play with her hands, molding them and twisting them and making them clap together, wondering how it all worked. How many different bones and joints compiled together to make each motion move so elegantly? I would press them to her face and lovingly she would reply with big eyes and her mouth in the shape of an “Oh!” all to make her littlest baby girl laugh one more time. One of the next memories of my mother was still early on in my life. In Oklahoma. In the living room of an apartment that sat dangerously upon high stilts. Fearless against the weekly tornadoes we would hide from. We sat in this room. Lights off. Huddled together. She brought out candles and we played games together with my sisters. There was a tornado outside? I hadn’t noticed… Why would anyone fear a storm that is outside, when inside of this hollow, shaky, apartment, one of the most beautiful and simplest of moments is occurring? She gave me confidence in these storms, “For God has not given us the spirit of fear…”
Later on, this room would be the place where I first understood who Jesus was. Sitting cross-legged on the crème short hair carpet I looked up idly at the television screen and watched as Big-Bird and Elmo ran across the screen in “A Sesame Street Christmas Special”. I don’t remember too much of it now, but I guess the Cookie Monster wasn’t the take home in this moment, but I remember it ended up on a roof. And when it was over my mom came and sat with me and told me the Christmas Story, God’s great plan of redemption in a simple little baby boy, and I knew that I wanted to be friends with that baby. So I followed my mom. I found her one day face down on the ground in prayer and worship. Belly down, arms sprawled out in front of her, she was crying, but I knew she wasn’t sad. So I walked over and gently laid down on my stomach. I decided to start singing next to her. I was four years old when I lived in this apartment. About a year goes by and we were in the courtyard of the mega-church, “Rhema Bible Church”. Every year they had a walk through garden set up with Christmas lights around their lake and gazebos and multiple pathways that intertwined and went around and seemed to travel on forever. We stopped at one of the concession stands and we got hot chocolate so hot that it burned my tongue, but I wasn’t too worried about it. My mom and I walked through these paths until we came up on one set of lights. Their chords wrapped around the thick wire forming letters in the shapes of “J-E-S-U-S.” My mom looked at me and told me in a kind of excitement you can’t really genuinely replicate, “That’s Jesus! That’s how you spell Jesus, Lexy!” We kept on moving and together for the rest of the night I recited to myself “J-E-S-U-S…”
In a few months, I would find myself in a bathtub with my mom combing conditioner through my short bright blonde hair. I got that from my dad, (I got a lot more from my dad too, but that’s for another post). I looked up at her, our eyes a dark brown reflection of the other’s and she looked worried, kind of flustered. My Nana and Pap were here and I didn’t really know what was going on but she had to go. She walked out of the bathroom to go talk to them. This moment’s all a blurry confusion in my head but she came back in a hurry trying to rinse my hair as fast as she could, but I spent that night in a car with hair coated in conditioner, trying to pull the thick, dry globs apart from my strands. We were on our way back to Pennsylvania.
In Pennsylvania, I lived with my Nana and Pap in an old three story for a while until we found an old run down house on the cheap in a coal-mining town called, “Gray”. The yellow paint was chipping off the siding and the bathtub was stained, but I liked it because there was an old rickety shed in the back that, if I’m really sweet, my dad might fix up into a playhouse (It was knocked down). But my parents decided they were going to make this place a home and began remodeling. During this time my dad was a full-time pastor, and my mom a stayed at home. The two-foot high grass was mowed, the duplex separating wall was knocked down, and we begin ripping everything up from the seams. It became a bigger undertaking than we thought. I’ll never forget the day when I came home from first grade and my mom had ripped the entire living room ceiling down herself. I walked in the door and up on a ladder, she stood, sledgehammer in hand, a pile of rubble about twenty feet long lay in her wake. Women are strong. My mom was strong. But my mom was also gentle. Through it all when there were holes in the floor, when sinks went flying downstairs, slamming against the backs of kitchen walls, when the winter months came, and no heating in our house in the harsh Pennsylvania mountain weather meant giving up blankets from her own bed for her daughters, when hours of typing relentlessly on her keyboard to make a little extra money for kerosene added up, she persevered. She put us each to bed in our winter coats and mittens and stayed a little while longer to teach me how to say the Lord’s Prayer.
She made sure my oldest sister had the Sweet Sixteen of her dreams, that she felt beautiful, that she understood what it meant to be a confident woman… I wanted to be that. I wanted to be like them. Bottles of perfume lining vanity counters. Makeup tossed haphazardly into bags, high heels sitting politely in rows in closets. They were both so mature and womanly. I got myself in trouble many a time rummaging through their rooms, sneaking into closets and trying pretty dresses on. But that’s not what it meant to be a woman I found out, that was just an expression of it. And not every woman is like that. When my oldest sister’s world was rocked and all of the pink and frills were stripped away, and the mascara melted and the faces became puffy, my mom was there for her. And it was beautiful. My mom stabilized her, and even though I was in my own little world and didn’t understand fully what was happening at the time, I witnessed something meaningful. A mother, hard-worn and wise through time, filling the gaps for a broken daughter, who was too gentle for this world still.
When our house burned down, my mother kept the perspective. When my father’s church closed down shortly after, she kept him going. When everything seemed to be crumbling around us, she tried her darndest to make sure we didn’t. I remember the night of the fire I furiously ran up the street past the policemen who were trying to restrain me. I didn’t care who you were, this was my life slipping away. I got to the top of the street and quickly realized, “What for?” because now all we do is wait. Now we simply watch. It just burns… My oldest sister was waiting outside with my cat Buttons in her arms, and I had never been so relieved in my life. I don’t really remember a lot from this time in my life even though I was twelve. But I remember the utter feeling of apathy that night. Driving to my Nana’s apartment, Buttons in lap. Getting out of the car, sitting at the table, poking at my chili, going to bed. The next morning we were up and running. Headed back to the remains of the house and stripping it. Everything was emptied out and I wanted to be emptied out, but my mom wouldn’t let me. She bought us twenty-gallon bins to hold the rest of our belongings and found us a different place to stay every night that summer. She wouldn’t give up without a fight.
Fast forward to high school. Past middle-school, past my mom getting me reinstated in a healthy youth group, past the tears and the frustrations of growing into a woman, and yet not really being one, and past all of the sister fights my mom had to be there to mediate. Fast forward to my high-school years. Fast forward to hour long car rides where my mom listened to my incessant sharing of worship music, because she knew I had a passion, to tears on long drives home from church because I didn’t feel good enough. To all of the times, she politely listened as I insisted I would end up at Hillsong in Australia one day. To all of the encouraging talks and wisdom shared from one generation to the next in some of the hardest times in my life. To when she tried to pick up the shattered pieces of my heart after it was broken for the first time. To her constant reminders to not make the same mistakes again, because I’m much like her, and she knows very well I would prefer to stay in a place of comfort, but that’s not what I need. Fast-forward to weekly hospital visits and tears of frustration at my body not working right. To the prayers and petitions, she made on my behalf that everything would work out and I would end up okay. Fast forward to me making those same mistakes again that she warned me about, and her not judging me, only wanting to help.
Fast-forward to all of the practical advice she taught me about what it is to “Be a lady”. Always wear pantyhose, smile with your teeth, sit up straight and open your chest to the room let them know that you want to be there, never underestimate brown eyeshadow with your brown eyes Alexa, always carry a purse on you, be kind to guys no matter, but always remember you are a prize and should not be easily won, DON’T TALK TO BOYS AFTER MIDNIGHT. I didn’t always listen to her, I still slouch, forget my purse, and sometimes I slip up and talk to someone too late. But I will always hold on to the little things my mom has taught me over the years. Because while I was going through things for the past twenty years, so was she. We lived lives side by side, but so different at the same time, and her perspective will be different than mine, but I admire hers so much. And as I’m growing older, I think I am learning to appreciate the sacrifices my mom has made, the investments that she has put into me. I am her namesake, I am the first one who was an imprint of her image. I’m proud to have her as my mother, to have been able to sit under the shade of her tree for so many years, and now that I’m out from under it, I have to face the elements alone, but the things she taught me still go with me. And I think that is why I was so okay with dying my hair dark brown when I was asked to for a role that’s I’m playing… because maybe I want to be like her when I grow up, maybe I want to play a role like hers.
