Special Anniversary

Special Anniversary

 

Growing up even as a pre-teen, I felt tough, border line invincible.  After all I grew up watching the Lone Ranger, the Adventures of Superman, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and others, plus a real live mouthy but role model just the same, Cassius Clay (later, Mohamad Ali).  Like Clay I felt that given the opportunity, I could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.  Later in high school I lettered in every sport I participated in (football, wrestling, and track and field).  I was raised on the farm so I worked hard, and trained hard.  My football coach once told one of his assistance that he didn’t have to worry about players like me because he knew I stayed in shape year round thanks to the farm life style.  Over hearing things like that, didn’t hurt my ego at all.

 

Later on in life, and even now I am very competitive in everything I get involved in: sports, board games, work, business, and life in general. I have a reason for establishing my behavior and attitude in the early years.  As I’ve gotten older, I feel safer when going into a bad neighborhood if Mr. Smith, and Mr. Wesson come along for the ride.  I’m sure the years has maintained my animalistic instincts except that now:  I most likely float like a bee, and sting like a butterfly (I’m being serious).

My mother and father separated and later divorced around the time that I was about 8 years old.  For that reason, my mother for all of my life, was the go to person.  Her love for me was unconditional.  There was nothing in her life that was more important to her than her little boy.  Even as I grew into adulthood, she treated me as an adult but I was always her little boy.  At times when I was being stubborn about anything in my life she was the only person that could bring me off of my high horse, and make me reason.

Classic Beauty

 

While I was growing up without a father, she was both mother and father, and she worked two or three jobs to make sure that we lived in the best neighborhood that she could afford for my safety.  I lived my life (even now) to make her proud of me.  As tough as I thought I was, all it would take was a stern look from my mother to make me fall in line.  That was a level of authority that I didn’t dare question.  My mother never spanked me (ever), all she had to do was let me know that she was disappointed in something I said or did, and raise her voice.  I would raise my arms up to her asking for a hug, and apologizing for any wrong doing, and we were good.

 

As an adult I would call her from anywhere I might be in the country or out of the country, on her birthday and Mother’s Day.  If I was anywhere in the same State, I would drop in for a meal with her to celebrate the occasion.  I regularly called her on my birthday and/or sent flowers to thank her for giving me life.  You could say and I admit it, I was and still am (proudly) a mama’s boy.

 

Today is the 14^th anniversary of the day she was called to Heaven.  On this day 14 years ago for the first time ever, I felt alone and vulnerable.  In her last years, I knew that she could no longer protect me, but she always ended every in person or phone conversation with God Bless you my son.  I didn’t realize how powerful those words were, until I couldn’t hear them anymore.  I love and miss my dear mother, but I know that she is in a better place, and looking over her little boy.  The best is yet to come…..