Close to Nowhere

Mother’s Day is past and, as usual, I spent a lot of the day thinking about my mother, and my kids.

Daughter Dana is a good mom. She raised two wonderful daughters and even though I’m their grandmother I have to say they really are good girls. Beautiful as well.

Merideth is the only one to have children yet. Remy and her husband are trying to wait a while. Frankly, I, along with Mitch’s mom Laura, am really tired of waiting on them.

Mere and her husband Tim have two of the most perfect children ever. And they are durn near perfect parents. Their patience is incredible.

My mom, Thelma, had incredible patience also. She needed it with the rotten kids she had.

My older sister Peggy was a role model sister. Eight years older than me, I often felt like I had two mothers. She and Mama would make fudge and then have to hide it to keep me from eating it all and getting sick. (I always found it and always got sick.)

Peggy and her family moved to Searcy, Ark. Not long after Dana was born. A year or so later, Mama and Daddy, along with brothers Dennis and Danny moved to Searcy also. While spending the weekend with them, the funniest memory of my mother happened.

Mama and I would drive over to Peggy’s, get her and whatever kids happened to be at home and head out somewhere. This particular trip we’d gone to the grocery store for picnic supplies. This was back in the mid-’80s and cars didn’t do everything automatically. The Ford Comet that I had did not have automatic anything, let alone door locks.

My dad was deaf and they’d never had a car and Mama wasn’t familiar with cars at all. When I told her to hold the lock button when she shut the door so it would lock, she nodded and Peggy and I walked on toward the grocery store.

Mama didn’t come with us. She was standing by the car and looking at us with a “help” expression on her face.

She was holding the inside lock button and trying to figure out how to shut the door with her hand on the button. Peggy and I couldn’t walk for laughing. Mama didn’t think about holding the outside lock button while shutting the door. Apparently she didn’t notice the outside button. All she knew was that holding the inside button and shutting the door was not going to work.

Peggy and I laughed about that for years. I don’t think Mama thought it was that funny. But true to her kind, patient nature, she never yelled at us for laughing at her.