don’t know for how long. I already called and talked to George about it. Sandy needs someone to make her take care of herself the way she should, at least while she heals up.” But there’s something in her voice that tells me this relocation may be more than temporary.
I feel a sting of separation. As much as our rough edges may rub blisters on each other from time to time, my mother and I have never been more than a few miles apart since the Piggly Wiggly years. Now she will be halfway across the country.
I bite back a sudden wave of insecurity and the bleak but selfish thought that she will miss all the kids’ senior-year milestones.
“I think you should.” I have to force myself to say it.
“But I’ll be home for all the kids’ things. As many as I can catch.” She reads my mind the way mothers and daughters do. “I have frequent-flier miles.”
“The school will miss having you for all those volunteer hours.” I’m searching for something innocuous that won’t stir up more emotion. I know this is the right thing for my mother, and I don’t want to mess it up.
She flips a hand in the air, swatting a man behind her, then turning to apologize before answering me. “Phooey on that school system. They should have appreciated me while they had me.”
Her answer leaves me dumbfounded. This is the first time I’ve heard her actually let it go, not rehash all the reasons it was wrong for the district superintendent to make staffing decisions based on age and gender rather than years of experience.
Another milestone. Maybe we are both stretching our wings. Maybe this is a butterfly season for both of us.
Perhaps this rebirth from one thing to another happens repeatedly in a lifetime. Maybe life is a series of little deaths and rebirths, of passages and rites of passage, of God teaching you to stop clinging to one thing so you can reach for another.
A death grip doesn’t reach very well.
I think of that tiny woman in her big white house in Fairhope. Aunt Sandy’s friend, Iola Anne Poole—ninety-one years old, yet still surviving on these shifting bars of sand.
What she said makes sense now, as I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my mother and watch the dolphins play in the sunlit water. The storms come and it’s water and wind as far as the eye can see for a bit. But winds calm and the waters drain. We find our feet again, and the ground under us sprouts a new crop of seed. That is always the way of it.
I don’t suppose this storm will be any different.
About the Author
Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, speaker, and the author of twenty novels, including the national bestseller Tending Roses , now in its eighteenth printing. She is a seven-time ACFW Carol Award nominee, a Christy Award nominee, and a two-time Carol Award winner. Her novel Blue Moon Bay was a Booklist Top Ten of 2012 pick. Recently the group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa along with Bill Ford, Camille Cosby, and six others as recipients of the National Civies Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. When not dreaming up stories, Lisa spends time on the road as a motivational speaker. Via Internet, she shares with readers as far away as India, where Tending Roses has been used to promote women’s literacy, and as close to home as Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the county library system has used Tending Roses to help volunteers teach adults to read.
Lisa lives on a ranch in Texas, where she spoils the livestock, raises boys, and teaches Sunday school to high school seniors. She was inspired to become a writer by a first-grade teacher who said she expected to see Lisa’s name in a magazine one day. Lisa also entertained childhood dreams of being an Olympic gymnast and winning the National Finals Rodeo but was stalled by the inability to do a backflip on the balance beam and parents who wouldn’t finance a rodeo career. She
I feel a sting of separation. As much as our rough edges may rub blisters on each other from time to time, my mother and I have never been more than a few miles apart since the Piggly Wiggly years. Now she will be halfway across the country.
I bite back a sudden wave of insecurity and the bleak but selfish thought that she will miss all the kids’ senior-year milestones.
“I think you should.” I have to force myself to say it.
“But I’ll be home for all the kids’ things. As many as I can catch.” She reads my mind the way mothers and daughters do. “I have frequent-flier miles.”
“The school will miss having you for all those volunteer hours.” I’m searching for something innocuous that won’t stir up more emotion. I know this is the right thing for my mother, and I don’t want to mess it up.
She flips a hand in the air, swatting a man behind her, then turning to apologize before answering me. “Phooey on that school system. They should have appreciated me while they had me.”
Her answer leaves me dumbfounded. This is the first time I’ve heard her actually let it go, not rehash all the reasons it was wrong for the district superintendent to make staffing decisions based on age and gender rather than years of experience.
Another milestone. Maybe we are both stretching our wings. Maybe this is a butterfly season for both of us.
Perhaps this rebirth from one thing to another happens repeatedly in a lifetime. Maybe life is a series of little deaths and rebirths, of passages and rites of passage, of God teaching you to stop clinging to one thing so you can reach for another.
A death grip doesn’t reach very well.
I think of that tiny woman in her big white house in Fairhope. Aunt Sandy’s friend, Iola Anne Poole—ninety-one years old, yet still surviving on these shifting bars of sand.
What she said makes sense now, as I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my mother and watch the dolphins play in the sunlit water. The storms come and it’s water and wind as far as the eye can see for a bit. But winds calm and the waters drain. We find our feet again, and the ground under us sprouts a new crop of seed. That is always the way of it.
I don’t suppose this storm will be any different.
About the Author
Lisa Wingate is a former journalist, speaker, and the author of twenty novels, including the national bestseller Tending Roses , now in its eighteenth printing. She is a seven-time ACFW Carol Award nominee, a Christy Award nominee, and a two-time Carol Award winner. Her novel Blue Moon Bay was a Booklist Top Ten of 2012 pick. Recently the group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa along with Bill Ford, Camille Cosby, and six others as recipients of the National Civies Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. When not dreaming up stories, Lisa spends time on the road as a motivational speaker. Via Internet, she shares with readers as far away as India, where Tending Roses has been used to promote women’s literacy, and as close to home as Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the county library system has used Tending Roses to help volunteers teach adults to read.
Lisa lives on a ranch in Texas, where she spoils the livestock, raises boys, and teaches Sunday school to high school seniors. She was inspired to become a writer by a first-grade teacher who said she expected to see Lisa’s name in a magazine one day. Lisa also entertained childhood dreams of being an Olympic gymnast and winning the National Finals Rodeo but was stalled by the inability to do a backflip on the balance beam and parents who wouldn’t finance a rodeo career. She
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