I took my mother to Laurel, MS on Tuesday. She’d not seen all of the new things going on there since the HGTV show, Home Town, has changed its vibe pretty significantly. After that Tuesday Elvis matinee we enjoyed, I decided we’d make Tuesdays our regular day to do something fun together and Laurel was what I’d planned for this week. 

We got there around 11 and we were both ready for lunch. We decided on Pearl’s Diner as it was fried chicken day and Mama is a sucker for a fried chicken leg. There was a line already forming outside, so I dropped her off to save us a spot while I parked the car. I easily found a parking space on the same block and I walked back up to join her in line. I came up and she said, “Joni, I’d like you to meet so and so- they’re here visiting from Missouri.” Then she turns around to another couple and says, “and you remember so and so who use to go to church with us.” I thought, “dang, Mama. I just let you out of the car a minute and a half ago and you’ve already met people from Missouri and found old friends who’d moved away.” Before we made it inside, she made friends with a lady from New Orleans and we heard her life story. Before we left, she knew all about the family history of Pearl’s Diner and was awfully tight with Pearl’s son. I’ve been thinking for a while she should either be in charge of the Mississippi Welcome Center system or go to work for the FBI -interrogation division. Terrorists couldn’t hold up under her interrogative powers. She’d know everything about them in a minute and a half. In a world that seems to have forgotten how to communicate normally and effectively, it is refreshing to see it done the old-fashioned way.

My mother and I have always done things together- that’s nothing new. But, when I designated a special day for us to spend together, she remarked that it must mean she’s getting old. Same thing she says around her birthdays when we gather everyone around her for a picture. I guess I’d have to admit there’s some truth to that. She’ll be 80 this year and it does make me more aware of the swiftness of time and how I should utilize it.

Along the same lines, about a week before Blair was to start 7th grade, I woke up early one random morning and a wave of sadness hit me out of nowhere. My mind started spinning and thinking about all the changes 7th grade would bring. She was my first child and there was a threshold we were about to cross and it hit me that morning. I lay in bed and cried the first tears of letting go of her. A process of mourning that came in waves and in little increments over the span of the next 8 or 9 years. She was 13. Asleep in her bed. Couldn’t even drive. She wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but the realization that something I loved so much would leave me, one day, started that morning in bed. She was my girl turning into a young lady and, at that point, I couldn’t imagine being without her. 

I think we all look ahead and anticipate changes that will be difficult for us. Maybe we even begin to mourn things long before there’s anything to mourn. Start to miss things even before they’re gone. When we see the very first light of transition far off in the distance, maybe it’s then that we start the process of grieving. Don’t get me wrong, aside from arthritis, there’s not a thing wrong with my mother that we know about- unless stubbornness is terminal. No, I’m just more aware that you only get one mother and they generally don’t live forever. 

Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” I’m no theologian, but I think that could mean gaining the wisdom of how to maximize/take advantage of/squeeze all the good out of our allotted time on this earth. Living for Jesus, loving people, and working out our calling. So, may we rock our babies ‘cause babies don’t keep. Love our mamas because they don’t either. And live for God with our whole being. May we seize the day. 

Happy Weekend, y’all. 

JONI