As much as I truly do love to travel, there’s no place in the world that compares to home. Yesterday morning I boarded my flight (not on duty!) and headed back to beautiful Houston, TX. My sister Molly was waiting for me at the gate – geez Luis have I missed that girl!
I’m actually in town for an incredibly special reason – my mom’s birthday. She turns 64-years-old on June 15th – incidentally the same day as Father’s Day. This has always been a running joke in my family – to never mention my mother’s birthday and only speak of Father’s Day plans. Not sure mom ever thinks it’s funny we pretend to forget any other significance in the day!
While we still spoil my dad, the day is really all about mom. Molly had an awesome idea this year – she’s compiling a book made from family and her closest friends, detailing their favorite memories with her. As a daughter that comes with a lot of pressure I suppose – when you have the fortune of having a mother like I do, there’s an endless amount of memories to choose from.
Maybe I overthought things but I was stumped. There was the time she took me skiing for the first time in Utah. Another time she stayed up all night and talked to me after a boy broke my heart in high school and stood me up at a dance. But the problem with these memories, at least in my opinion, was they were more about me. I wanted my favorite memory of mom to be something more reflective of her. And then I remembered – the perfect memory of mom.
When grandma wasn’t doing so well a few years ago, I remember my mom immediately left Houston to be by her side. Fortunately, she was recently retired and there wasn’t much to leave behind besides a big house and our dog, Roscoe. With dad holding down the house, mom had the freedom to be with grandma in her time of need.
It was a month or so before I got the chance to visit mom and grandma. When I got there, my mom was asleep on the couch – she’d be working hard to keep grandma comfortable. Later that night we all had dinner around grandma’s bed – just us girls – and started talking about how much my life had changed since I became a flight attendant. It wasn’t long until grandma started gushing about mom.
Grandma had made a corner of the house a relic to mom – a shrine of all her accomplishments. At one point in her life, she was cheer captain in middle school – little did I know. Years later she was honored by her school for working endless service hours at a shelter. Decades later, seeing my mom right by grandma’s side, it’s easy to see that selflessness never changed.
My favorite memory of mom was seeing her beam with pride while grandma listed her endless accomplishments. She knew she was loved, something she transferred to her kids. Years after grandma passed, that memory still comes back to me now and again. That relationship between mother-daughter, it’s truly something special. Fortunately I had the best teachers – happy birthday, mom!
Categories: Texas
