Mom's Rules

Mom’s Rules

         I ambled slowly through the back door into the small weather beaten wooden building with the newly painted blue Library sign. I closed the door as a gush of cold air stirred up the white powdery snow on the back step. This back room was small, the walls had that dark wood paneling popular on the outside of station wagons in the 1970’s. The walls were lined with gray metal shelves filled with dog-eared books, reaching from the green Astroturf like carpeting to the pale white ceiling. Gray shadows from the fluorescent lighting gave the room an empty lonely feeling.
I could hear that booming voice and raucous laugh out front from the back room. When I stepped quietly around the corner, there, sitting at the old yellow faded metal desk was my mother. Her head full of short auburn hair, tight curls from her perm like a poodle’s coat, framed her face. Her thin reddish lips parted in a smile to reveal a set of crooked, yellow stained teeth from years of smoking and coffee. Her dark blue eyes seemed to sparkle like the sapphire she wore around her thick pale neck. Her too small nose crinkled up when she smiled, like she had just smelled something unpleasant.

She lifted her 6 foot frame out of the black  leather swivel chair, her floral print dress rustling as she stood up to envelope the older woman who had just entered through the door into a hug. The lady seemed to disappear into the folds of my mother’s 250 pounds, like a blanket being wrapped around her. This was the norm for every single person that walked through the thick wooden door into her world.  No matter what was going on in her life, she would make every person feel special and important.
“Treat others as you would want to be treated and be kind,” she would remind me as she gently tousled my hair each evening as she tucked me into bed. That was the way she spent her days, always putting the needs of people in our town before her own. I watched as she selflessly gave of herself, even when facing her toughest time as she went through a divorce from my dad. She never asked for help for herself, but people always seemed to be there for her to lend a hand.
It has been 23 years since I sat on the red fabric pew at the front of the chapel filled with pink and white carnation and Lilly floral arrangements, as more than 200 people came to say their goodbyes to my mother.  Person after person stood up in the small room and recalled stories of things she had done that had touched their lives, as I sat there with tears silently rolling down my red cheeks onto my lips and neck.  I vowed then to honor my mother’s memory by living how she had taught me. No matter what was going on in my life, there was always someone else out there who had it harder than me and could use my help.