A Welcoming Mama
I was delighted yesterday morning when my cousin Roger texted to see if it would be okay for him to come to see my mother. Mother is responding in limited ways but she perked up when she saw Roger.
We cousins–Roger, my brother Steve, and I–spent hours together yesterday. My heart and soul were bursting with the joy of it.
We spent time gathered around Mother’s hospital bed. At lunchtime, we gathered around the gray and chrome table that we used to gather around when we were all kids in Mother’s kitchen (the table she purchased with her earnings while she waited for Daddy to get out of the service and for me to be born). We sat in the library, telling stories and remembering: adventures in Marrowbone Creek, cousin and friend football games in the field across from our house, the time a truck hit my Aunt Lavon’s car and Roger jumped out the window as it rolled over.
Steve and I remember the day Roger was born and we told him about it yesterday. His was a dramatic birth. Since his mama and one-year-old sister were living with us while his daddy served in Japan, Roger’s dramatic birth story went deep into the memory of four-year-old Steve and almost six-year-old Charlene and there it has remained.
Two statements that Roger made yesterday explain the bond between his family and ours:
“We lived at your house,” and
“Evelyn was my second mama.”
Roger was probably too young when his daddy got out of the service to remember when he and his mama and sister actually lived with us. He was talking about all the times we spent together when we children played together while our mama and his mama visited and the times that Mother babysat Roger and his sisters (two others came after their daddy returned from the service). Other than the babysitting times, I doubt that there were many times when my Aunt Lavon and my mother planned those visits. As I recall, they just showed up and that felt as natural as could be.
Except for the times when Mother’s extended family came to our house for holidays, I don’t remember my mother ever inviting another family over for dinner. That does not mean that Mother was not hospitable. Mother welcomed children. My cousins and my childhood friends remember with great fondness the times they spent at our house when we were kids. We played in the yard. We played in the house. They spent the night. We gathered around the gray and chrome table just like we did yesterday.
And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me . . .
Matthew 18:5