A mother’s love can come from anywhere

Most people who know me know my birth mother is not in my life. I’ve written in the past about how Mother’s Day is often a difficult holiday for me, not only because of that, but also because I’ve struggled to become a mother myself.

This year I am close to my due date and parts of the holiday aren’t as hard with this joy in my life.

But it is my first Mother’s Day without my grandma. She passed on March 15 at 82 years old.

I spent a lot of time with my grandma when I was young. I had a stepmom, but the two of us got along like oil and water. With my dad providing our only income, he was often gone at work.

This led to me spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ farm, especially in the summer.

My grandma was the oldest of six children. Below her were four brothers and the youngest a sister. As the oldest, she was in charge of her siblings growing up. It killed her to watch as all four of her brothers passed away.

For awhile, it was just grandma and her baby sister Paula. Now, Paula is all that’s left of the original six.

At the funeral, Paula came up and hugged me. I’ll never forget what she said. “She was like a mother to you,” she said. “She was like a mother to me too.”

I don’t know that I’d ever considered my grandma as a mother figure to me. Not because she wasn’t, but because I never knew any different. I never knew what a mother was like; I only knew what grandma was like. I suppose to me, that was the standard for grandmas. But she was far above any standard.

I’m a very crafty, creative person, and I attribute all of that to my grandma. You would never see her artwork and think it belongs in a gallery or a museum, but it was always full of life and personality.

Nothing was off limits for her. One year, she painted records for us all. Another she traced all of our hands and made us each individualized doodles and art inside the hand to reflect our personalities.

She’d make skirts by sewing together my grandpa’s old ties, forming a triangular fringe on the bottom.

Her garden was her biggest work of art, and this did belong in a gallery or museum. My summer memories on the farm are picking mulberries, catching frogs in the pond and making bouquets of flowers.

I’ve been told my first word was even with my grandma. Whenever she saw a pretty bird, especially a hummingbird, she would crouch down next to me, point and tell me there was a bird. Allegedly I got to the point where if I saw a bird, I would squat, point and say “bird.”

When I was young, she read me “The Berenstain Bears.” She had so many of those books.

As I got older, she introduced me to “The Boxcar Children.” This even transitioned to my grandparents acquiring a caboose we put down in the woods as a campsite.

In the summer, we would walk or ride the golf cart down to the spot, play in the caboose and cook s’mores. I would sleep in my little tent while my grandparents camped in the train car. In the morning, my grandpa would make breakfast over the fire.

My grandparents came to every home cross country meet, and some of the away ones.

One time after a particularly bad race, my grandma told me I did a great job. “You would tell me that even if I got last place in a race full of kindergarteners,” I said, probably with major attitude.

From then on, every time she told me she was proud of me, she’d add, “And I’d still be proud of you if you got last place in the kindergarten race.”

Sometimes I felt like I lost my grandma before she was actually gone. The grandma I grew up with was vivacious, full of life and covered in dirt from her garden.

As she grew older, her movements were limited, her pain was severe and sometimes her patience was thin. But I know she always loved to see me and the rest of the family.

In her obituary, I wrote, “Even at the end, she remained the same spunky woman she was all her life.” My grandpa loves that line. He knows better than anyone just how spunky she was.

At the ICU a few days before she died, they asked if she wanted ice cream. “We have vanilla, strawberry or chocolate,” they said. “Butter pecan,” she said.

That was grandma for you.

I know she’s pain free and in a wonderful place now. It makes me happy to know the two babies I lost are now being cared for by the one who taught me a mother’s love.