Friday, April 30, 2010

Sharing Sharon


The beautiful lady in this photo is my mother, Sharon Louise Thornton. Today would have been her 75th birthday! I honor her -- one of the best people I've ever known -- in today's post.

My mom loved peanut butter. Peanut butter never failed to give her the hiccups but she ate it frequently, in indiscrimate and odd combinations that made me shudder. Peanut-butter-and-potato-salad-sandwiches were a real summertime favorite with her. A slice of onion or tomato along with that wouldn't be unheard of, either!

Mom loved to grow vegetables in her garden and bake bread. She was a lover of simple things, living her last 18 years in a farm house where the heat was generated only by a wood-burning stove. To me, a hater of all forms of chilliness, this fact alone puts her on a pedestal.

As a little girl, my mother would sometimes sing me to sleep. The song I remember best is "Turn Around." Maybe it was by Harry Belafonte, one of her favorite singers. The lyrics went: "Turn around and you're small, turn around and you're grown, turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own." Now that my OWN children are grown, the words remind me of the preciousness, and speed, of life. At night, she taught me to pray "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." I remember her soft, melodic voice and her cool, gentle hands stroking unruly bangs off my feverish forehead. When I didn't feel well -- or perhaps, when I didn't look well, Mom would say I looked "peaked" (This is a two-syllable word that means pale -- I don't hear anyone use it these days.).

Before I knew her, Mom had platinum blonde hair she wore in a French twist, a cat named Cleopatra, and a brand new 1957 Rambler. She had silk dresses and pointy toed shoes with tall, slender heels.

My mother was kind and generous, and carried a quiet elegance rarely seen these days. She practiced etiquette and taught me that it's never, EVER, too late thank a person and it's never wrong to speak or write a kind word to someone. She was intelligent and articulate, and her laugh was music that lifted your spirit to hear it. Her sense of humor was dry, often leaning to the macabre, and oh, how we did laugh! When she knew she would be passing soon, she suggested I put some of her ashes into a pendant I could wear shopping -- so she could continue one of her favorite activities, post-life. I told her I would not be able to afford shopping with her but without her wallet.

It was a gift to be in her presence.

Another thing Mom loved was gold shoes. I bought my first pair of gold sandals for my wedding two years ago, and said, not for the first time or for the last time, "I'm turning into my mother." Dear God, please let it be so!

2 comments:

  1. Bravo, Sarah! You have SO brought this amazing woman to life. She clearly had a joy for living, for making things grow, for fun. And she shared some common good sense and wise things that mothers of their generation did, and that you don't see so much of now. She taught civility -- and what a gift!

    I see you in that photo -- maybe it's the smile or the cheekbones -- I'm not quite sure, yet, were I to match up mothers and daughters from long ago photographs, I would clearly put you together.

    Thank you for sharing her with us. Those of us who had wonderful relationships with our mothers who have since left this world can so appreciate the importance of sharing the life of someone so special, so dynamic. It keeps them alive, passes them on, and that's a gift.

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  2. such a beautiful tribute, so nice to get to know both of you in this post ♥

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