blog.DazMan.com

Mama
Rosemarie Compton
June 20th, 1939 ~ September 20th, 2005

There is no love greater than a mother’s love. There is no bond stronger than that of a mother and child. Marriage is but a piece of paper that makes two people husband and wife, a piece of paper that can be torn up and thrown into the wind and the marriage is over. But nothing can destroy the union of a mother and child. . .

Fifty-one years ago, for the first time, I met my mother. My first memory of my mother is being at her high school graduation. I was sitting there with my grandmother who we all lovingly called Mamado. I looked up and saw my mama on stage sitting at the piano and I just shouted out, “Hi, Mama”. My mother turned to me, smiled and began to play. 

When I was a young child my mother first went to secretarial school where she learned shorthand. I remember her quietly studying and me sitting at one end of the table, with a book, pencil and paper. Studying like my mama. Somewhere along the way Mother decided to become a nurse. I remember her holding me in her arms while reading to me from one of her nursing books as the soft melodic sound of my mother’s voice gently put me to sleep.

I remember days of a young, youthful, vibrate mom as we skipped and hopped and played those games she learned in her recent childhood. Once, all of a sudden, my mom stopped and began to complain about an excruciating pain in her back. Fear ran over me as I cried out, “What’s wrong Mama, what’s wrong?” She stood up, looked me in the eyes and sang, “Step on a crack. Break your mother’s back.” She picked me up and ran down the street with me in her arms as we laughed and giggled all the way.

At my 8th grade graduation I saved the last dance for my mother and was pleasantly surprised when they played my favorite song, “La La La La Means I Love You,” and for the first time in my life I held my mother in my arms as I sang in her ear, “La la la la means I love you.” My mother and I recently recounted the memories of that dance. She described it to me exactly as I remembered it. She sat there and smiled while she told the story. It was at that moment my mother answered a question I sometimes wondered: Mama did I make you smile, mama did I make you proud?

I recently discovered my mother was a role model for the women in our family. They wanted to be like her. People were proud of her because she was a nurse. They admired her for the accomplishments she had achieved in life in spite of the obstacles. How she became a single working mom, raising two sons, sent us to Catholic school, kept food on the table and clothes on our back. She always kept us and our clothes neat and clean. She kept our home immaculate and we lived in a good neighborhood with well-kept manicured lawns on a tree-lined street.

My mother instilled values in me, to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. And by example she showed me how to stand up for what I believed in when she was a part of the Civil Rights Movement, standing up for her rights and the rights of others. My mother told me there’s nothing in this world I can’t do if I put my mind to it. There is no such word as can’t; it’s not that you can’t do it, it’s that you don’t want to. She taught me to judge each man as an individual and not the race as a whole. The day I made fun of a handicapped individual, my mother grabbed me, looked me in the eyes and scolded me saying, “Don’t you ever let me catch you doing that again; he is a child of God and deserves God’s love just as much as you!” When I became a young adult people began to spread rumors and lies about me. I couldn’t understand why so I called my mother and asked her, why? My mother told me when people don’t have a life of their own they will create one for you. She told me if you don’t have something good to say don’t say nothing. She told me to know a man before you judge a man. She taught me it is Christ Jesus who strengthens me and with God on my side all things are possible. And I believed her.

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, an Orthodox Rabbi. We were having a conversation about my mother and he told one of his many parables on life and he ended it by saying, “One mother can raise nine children but not one child can raise a mother.”

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