My husband and I went to visit Aunt Barbara and Uncle H.K at there house and we had pizza At Angelo's pizza just like the one that is here in Danbury Ct on South St. We love Pennsylvania. My mother and I visited both of them near Allentown. And also in Ridgewood my mom had her house that she grew up in. My father lived in the city and they met in Redding Ct. I know they met in the choir. She taught kinderga he was a psychologist. They wanted 6 children and had 4. All married 3 niece's and 1 grand niece.
Of course, as a babe, I was looking for Mom before my first memories -- looking for food, for comfort, for protection – all those things that true love brings. Her true love carried all three of her children and their families through thick and thin.
As the time for my nursery school approached, I watched as Mom took a brush scythe and cleared a path that seemed like a mile (maybe 150 feet) from our house to the neighbor’s nursery school.
Before, during, and after that time, I was looking for Mom to teach me numbers. I loved learning math from her as a tiny tot and up through many years of school. As my math skills developed, her teaching focused more on my needy areas of vocabulary and grammar. Even within the most recent months, she would give the answers and spellings for the crossword puzzles she could no longer read due to her deteriorating eyesight.
Although some of our core beliefs diverged, I could look for Mom to agree on certain things including the value of everyone and their inalienable rights, and the need for separation of church and state to insure all the right to believe, or not believe, what they choose.
We could look for Mom to enjoy sharing a good laugh on any occasion and at the expense of no one. We could look for Mom serve home-cooked, home-grown foods. Her thumb was certainly the greenest in the family. I could look for Mom to love and forgive during my long convalescence after wrecking a motorcycle I was not allowed to have.
All could be looking for Mom at the Topton Home to lead out in exercise and to be faithfully feeding Dad at mealtimes during the last years of his life, all the while sharing smiles and encouraging words with care givers and residents.
After her great stroke, we drove to the Reading Hospital looking for Mom. We found her well cared for and still full of mental vigor even though the stroke had laid her low. Perhaps in part due to her background in fitness and physical education she could still arm wrestle with her strong right arm. Loretta brought out the teacher/librarian by reciting the poem by Joyce Kilmer which Mom was willing and able to finish, “. . . only God can make a tree.”
A couple of years ago Mom spoke of hearing music that none of the rest of us could hear at the time. After a while she stated that it was “Amazing Grace.” How wonderful! When the hospital chaplain asked us the day after Mom’s stroke if there was anything she could do, she beautifully sang a couple verses of that grand hymn which lifted all of our spirits.
As energies waned we were looking for Mom to rally, to learn to shallow again, to grasp the hand one more time. Those things did not happen -- yet. I read to Mom from Revelation 21 about the new earth, about the end of crying and suffering and death. I spoke to her about the Good Shepherd who was walking “through the valley of the shadow” with her. I spoke with my Jesus about Mom’s loving and good heart, about the joy she could have in Heaven, about His expressed will that none should perish, and of His righteous judgment.
I believe on that great gettin’ up morning I will be again looking for Mom, and I hope we bask together in God’s amazing grace throughout eternity. God knows.
Always liberal, always outspoken in her support of causes for freedom and equality for all people, Mom would sometimes embarrass reticent me. She loved a good argument and she argued politics with the dentist as he worked on my teeth. Yikes!
