Mom… Until the Umiak Flies

Journals half written litter our house, finding them tucked away in every nook and cranny.  Half thoughts, some dated, some not, recipes, poems, memories and dreams – pieces of my mom sprinkled like glitter throughout my family home.  Must have been her way of leaving a piece of herself behind for us all to remember.  She always liked adding a little sparkle to anything she did.  Now her writing adds sparkle to the house she made a home.

From since I remember until she became very ill, Mom woke hours before her family.  It was her time to be herself.  I imagine her waking up to a silent house and feeling at peace with her sleeping family safe in the home she had made.  Sitting down at the kitchen table, she would get out pen and paper and disappear into her own world full of magic, nature, creativity, and words.

Unaware of my presence, I walk into the dining room, eyes still filled with sleep, and find Her, one leg tucked under the other, half-lotus position on the cushioned chairs at the kitchen table.  Un-phased, She looks up and smiles at me, pulling Herself out of Her world of pen and paper.  In those seconds I saw a part of who She was when She didn’t know She needed to be my Mom, though I didn’t know it at the time. 

In reflecting after Her death, I now realize that those moments, when we both existed in the same space, but a world apart, I was witness to Lizbeth. Not my Mom but the person who was SHE – Lizbeth – naked without her mom-skin — bare and simply self. 

Rarely was I able to see my Mom as Lizbeth, but in those moments I saw a peek into who She might be.  I felt fortunate that in her last year and a half She felt like she could share who She really was with me and be, like in those early morning moments, Lizbeth.

I know now that She adored me, as a person and a daughter, and had I not known her as a Mom and a person, I would not have known the love that She held (and holds) for me.  She was a writer, an artist, a teacher, a wife, a sister, and a mother.  But mostly, she was She – Lizbeth.

Now I’m the mom that wakes up before my family, in the home that I have made.  Fingers wrapped around my mom’s coveted writing pen, holding her to me as I write about my family, my home, and who I am with my mom-skin and who I am in my bare simple self.