It’s been almost 13 years since my mother passed away. Although I’ve felt her loss profoundly at various times since then, grief has hit me in new waves since I became a mother. It seems unfathomable to me that I have to figure out this parenting thing without her.
There’s a lot that I miss about her: her twice-daily phone calls, her amazing meals, her letters in the mail, her wise words of wisdom, and I could go on and on. But one of the things I miss about her the most is her gifts. She was always a really thoughtful and generous gift-giver, and it pains me that my children won’t have the ability to say, “My mamaw got this for me.”
To be clear, my in-laws and my sister are all exceedingly generous, and my children are certainly not lacking for anything, and for that I am grateful. Very grateful. But there’s something about not being able to look at an outfit, a toy, a book, and knowing that my mother picked it for my son and daughter, which is hard to accept.
I wasn’t given the opportunity to get a lot of my mother’s things, but what I do have, I try to use, so my children can at least have a few tangible memories of her. The measuring cups Reagan and I use to bake were my mother’s. Marella has one of her quilts in her room, as well as her rocking chair. I have a few of my childhood books that my children now read. But I can imagine how thrilled she would have been to buy things for my son, and then my daughter, and how much she would have loved to shower them with gifts, as a tangible way to express her love. It’s something that I’ll never be able to experience.
Except.
When I’m getting ready in my bathroom, Reagan and Marella like to play with “the claw” — a big clip that I use to hold up parts of my hair while I’m drying it. One of them — not sure which one — misplaced it, and Reagan wanted it the other day. When I couldn’t find it, I remembered I had a plastic container of hair things from many years and hair styles ago, at the bottom of one of my bathroom cabinets, underneath a bunch of stuff. I dug it out, opened it, and found an almost-new bag of small hair bands, in several colors. My mother bought them for me when I was braiding my hair a lot, and sent them to me in the mail. I no longer have time to braid my hair, and they’re too small to hold all of my big mess of a mane, so they sat, unused in this container, for years.
Ironically, I was just considering going to the store to buy more small hair bands for Marella’s hair. She has to have “a pretty” (a hair band) in her hair every. single. day. (often with a bow), and the ones I bought for her last week are a little big for her hair. These are just the right size.
I grabbed the bag and ran to her room, with Reagan going, “Mommy, mommy, what?” because he certainly couldn’t understand my excitement. I took that bag and dumped all of them — maybe 25 or 30 — into her top drawer of her dresser, where we keep her hair things.
Since then, I’ve made sure to always use at least one of those hair bands in Marella’s hair. My mother may not be able to send birthday presents, Christmas presents, or just-because presents, but at least I can say my mother bought my daughter hair bands.
