Enjoy!
My mother died when I was five years old. Being an only child, I spend a lot of my younger years at my grandparents light yellow suburban home, and playing in the back yard of the youth center with the other boys where my father worked part time. I was too consumed in my own world of cops and robbers to remember those hard times. It was difficult for my father, having lost his partner and encourager, but he worked hard, doing his best to raise me right.
A year after my mother passed, dad began telling me things she had done. At that age most of them consisted of, "Son, do you know that your mother was a horrible cook? I never did tell her," or the often repeated, "Let me tell you, your mother was the most stubborn woman I have ever met." After my first Little League game he laughed and tussled my hair, saying that I was as much of a sore loser as my mother. But these were only the beginning. In the sixth grade I found out that my mother hated math as much as I did, and when I got Most Improved Player on my seventh grade foot ball team, dad gave me his own MIP trophy that my mother had confiscated from the dumpster after they had gotten married. The years passed slowly, but the echo of her quirky laugh, and the memories of both her obstinate and sweet nature coated them with a sweet part of her I could have easily missed out on.
The four summer months before I started high school my father was gone overseas and I had to live with his parents. Grandpa and Grandma were wonderful, but I missed my dad when grandpa took me hunting for the first time. Before I had started to think I was too old for stories of mom, but after a few encounters with the cute, eight grade brunette who was new in town that summer I wanted to ask my father what on earth she was talking about, partially cause I wanted to decipher the strange, but funny new girl, and partially because I wanted to hear more of mom.
Days and months had begun to pass more quickly, and suddenly dad was home. We moved out of our old flat into the new apartment complex that had been built where the baseball fields had been, and I started the ninth grade in the city. It was a drastic change from my previously slower, suburban life. Hundreds of kids, football practice and games, and gong out of my way to bump into my now-befriended brunette who always walked to the family-owned general store five blocks from my house once a week to buy an orange creme ice cream (the kind no one else wanted).
Life went on, and then one night my father announced that he had a date the following evening. Well . . . he actually asked me if I was okay with it, but what is a ninth grader supposed to say? When six o-clock rolled around the next day my father left with a hopeful grin, fumbling with his keys and wallet, wearing a suit jacked I never knew he had. The next three (possibly four?) hours could not have gone by more slowly. With no homework, my friends out of town, and nothing but Sponge-Bob and CSI to watch on the TV I sat on the couch, passing the time by trying to shoot as many of the assorted nuts as I could across the room, over the fake plant, and into the vase that always sate empty by the window. I had only made five or so (probably why coach had me as a halfback) when dad came home. At first he didn't see me, and sighed heavily as he hung his jacket up in the hall closet. Turning, he spotted me, scrubbed his face with his hands, and dropped into the old, red leather recliner.
"Son," he said, an amused smile creasing his tired eyes, "that woman babbled endlessly . . . more than my wife ever did."
I couldn't help but laugh. "It was that bad, huh?"
"Shit, son," (my father almost never cursed, so when he did, I knew it was legit), "she was crazier than any woman should be!" I must have had a shocked look on my face, because he laughed loudly and just shook his head. Getting up, he left for a moment, and came back with a sixteen ounce bottle of Pepsi in each hand, handed one to me, then sat back down.
"You're probably a little too old to be hearing stories of what your mother did, or how she was from your old man."
I broke the seal on my bottle cap and took a drink."Eh, I don't mind much."
"Good," he said, looking me straight in the eye, "so listen closely." I had never seen my father like this before.
"Son, I'm going to tell you what God did through your mother. We met in high school, and dated for a while. She broke it off. Told me that we both needed to grow up. I was a bit of a jerk, and she wasn't afraid to tell me so. I lost track of her for a couple years but we met again in college. I convinced her to date me, though now that I think of it, she wasn't difficult to persuade. I had given up on ministry then and one night before she left she simply said that I could not expect to get where I wanted and where God wanted me without having to fight for it. I started volunteering at a youth facility and visiting the juvenile detention once a week. I married your mother a year later. She drug me to her hometown on vacation early on. Me hating road trips, headed up to our hotel room, but your mother stayed downstairs to talk to the receptionist who had been having a bad day. That receptionist came to her funeral, was drug free, and had a shoe box stuffed with letters that your mother had sent over the years. One time we had had an argument about . . . I can't even remember what it was now, but she went to the gas station to get me a pop afterwards. She happened to get there just as one of my youth kids did, and bought him a sandwich and chatted with him at the deli for half an hour about his family, school, and the youth group. That boy told me at her funeral that he had been planning on robbing that station and shooting the teller for a small-town gang initiation. Instead he talked with your mother then walked her home. The gang got in a big fight that week, him getting a black eye and fractured rib. The gang split and he's now a missionary."
I was disappointed to find my Pepsi gone, but I tossed the bottle to the side and shifted to better face dad. Somehow my short attention span had dissipated.
"Three years into our marriage I was drafted into the military during the Arabian Nuclear Crisis. The war . . . how ever much of an actual war it was, lasted only three years, but in my time overseas, her letters were encouraging to my whole squad. The personal sections I kept for myself, but on the rough, long nights that we were stuck in bunkers or in the field I would read about the people she'd met and hilarious incidents she always happened upon. Most of those boys lived, thankfully, and at her funeral, they all told me how they were thankful for her letters and had gone onto lives of service for the kingdom." He paused as he thought, a peaceful look coming over his face. "One afternoon, a couple months after you were born, your mother led my small group at the youth center here in town after I decided I needed a much needed day off. Only one girl and her mom showed up. The mom was bruised, as was the girl. The father was abusive and had tried to kill the mom. They talked to your mother for two hours, and the mom confessed to having planned just dropping her daughter off then committing suicide. Your mother put you in that woman's arms and gave her a piece of her mind. She came home that night with the woman and girl, and they stayed in our living room for a week while the police were out looking for the husband. You want to know what son? That husband and wife now run the youth center across town and their little girl has just started working with inner-city kids."
Dad sat forward in his seat, looking intently at me. "I guess what I mean by all this, is that if your mother had not been there, or done the littlest things, those people might never have found Christ. You never know that impact that your life is making on the people around you. I pray every day, that no matter what you do, you do your best, because some one elses eternity might come down to you showing them the difference."
I never forgot that night. After that my father rarely spoke of my mother, except on rare occasions like when I brought home my first (as far as he knew) girlfriend, or graduated from high school. I went on to college and moved to another part of the country, and my father quit his job and worked full time with the youth group and centers. He was there when I wrecked my old rusty Dodge truck, when I graduated from college, and he was there when I asked the strange brunette girl to marry me. I worked hard, served enthusiastically, and kept back a smile when my bride told me that I need to get over my pride and fight for what I wanted if I truly did want to make a difference.
Ten more years, and two kids later my father passed away. We made the road trip back to my hometown, and both of us lingered to chat with the receptionist at our hotel. The funeral was larger than I had expected. So many people I had never met before swarmed in the doors. Speaking in front of them was one of the most challenging moments in my life, but it was for my father. We had to get special government permission to toss his ashes into the wind at the cliffs by the nearby nature preserve. Even the government is finicky about dust.
My wife had gone to get the car when I was approached by a group of men. The president of the youth center, a tall African gentleman, and a scrawny indie dressed man among them, they were led by an old, hobbling man dressed in military blues. Meeting them halfway I greeted them, and then the older man took my hand again.
"Son," he said, "let me tell you what your father did."
