Point of Commonality

 

A Point of Commonality

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Each of us are individuals, unique in many ways. That uniqueness makes the mass of humanity so amazing. For it might seem impossible that billions of people are all different in one way or another, but we are. But it is those differences that give depth to what we call the human race. The world is made richer by the contrasts, for each of us adds a bit of color to the canvas that makes up our world.

And yet, even with all our differences, we share at least one point of commonality.

For whatever your gender, whatever your ethic heritage, whatever pigment makes up your skin, whatever geological area you find yourself, whatever measuring stick can be used to distinguish one from another, there are things we have in common.

And among the things we share is a simple fact…we have or had a mother.

In the United States we designate this coming Sunday as Mother’s Day. It is a day that can evoke a wide range of emotions. Emotions of those that are mothers, and those that for reasons, sometimes painful reasons, are not.

And yet we have all been born and therefore have that common connection to every other person on this planet. Though I know it is not true in this imperfect world, that each of us has had a wonderful mom, yet we should take a few moments to recognize our mother. To consider how our lives were shaped, hopefully for the good, by the woman that helped to raise us.

To me that is the real reason for Mother’s Day. To take some time out of lives and reflect, to remember, and to try, as best we can, to understand our moms.

 So, I look back and consider the woman that was only twenty-three when she married. World II was part of the recent past, too close a memory, for someone that grew up in an occupied country. To that point her whole life had been one of limited resources…the depression…the war…the aftermath of war’s destruction. I try to imagine her as a young woman with hopes and dreams, for surely, she had them. But my memories of mom begin later. I was after all the second born, and my mom was a wife of four and half years at my arrival, and my conscious recollections certainly do not reach back that far.

But I do remember clearly the mother of four, a few years before my youngest brother joined the brood. I remember the years that followed, of the moves, and the restarting of our lives. I remember times of her frustration, for often our lives included difficulties and setbacks. But if there is one thing I remember most clearly, from all those years, it would be sacrifice, and the understanding that it was only through sacrifice that the impossible might be achieved.

Mom did without. And at the time I did not notice just how much she was so willing to sacrifice, and just how many years she did. But what an important lesson I learned from that example. You see I could have gone in two very different directions. I could have had an unquenchable desire for all the things I felt denied. Or I could have seen, that only through hard work and doing without, greater things could be possible.

Knowing there never was a guarantee of success.

But the years of watching both my parents, seeing the team they made, how they worked as equals, sacrificed as equals, I learned to look further down the road. To see the possible achievements in the future.

So, I understand I received more from my mom than the color of my eyes. I carry a small share of her determination…as well as optimism that in the end things will work out for the good.

This Sunday I will think about my parents, and especially my mom. And I will thank God for her, my point of commonality with all others.

I love you mom and I know that God, through his grace, has given you the rest you have so dutifully earned…much more, the rest you deserve.

5-12-2023 (711 Words)

 

Within the Hard Shell

Within the Hard Shell

By John W. Vander Velden

There are those days that seem extra special.  Days when we are driven to consider important things.  Mother’s Day causes us to think about the people that helped mold us in to the individuals we have become.  Though there is that underlying portion of us which we inherit…it’s in our genes, doesn’t environment have its affect.  And isn’t, it when we are at our youngest, those effects are most pronounced. 

My childhood home was not like yours...and yours was like none other.  Yet home was the evolving place where I spent those important years and with the people that shaped me most.  Though we were a farm family and dad was generally in sight and I found myself surrounded by siblings, mom surely had the greatest influence on us those years.  My parents brought so much of their culture across the sea, but it was through my mother’s actions so much of their history was revealed.  The woman always busy caring for home and family, surely had a share of teaching the work ethic we carry…I carry.  The world I saw those early years was shaped by someone that did her best to shield us.  Much of the darkness, the hate, and the prejudice existed in some place held far beyond our doors and windows of our lives.

Many would consider her just a simple woman, doing her best to live in a world that grew more complex.   The hard shell she showed the world, hid life’s pain and disappointments from even the closest eyes, a sensitivity kept locked away out of sight.  Few took the effort to see beyond the hard exterior they saw first.  And we, her children, felt too busy to notice.

Perhaps one day a year is enough reverence for the woman that bore me, but it seems inadequate as I consider this person that had such a profound influence on my life.  So I offer these few words, an offering insufficient, to remember and to honor one of the most important people I have known…a person within the hard shell…mom.

(349 Words)  5-6-2016

 

 

When He Closed His Eyes

When He Closed His Eyes

                                   

By John W. Vander Velden

 

On days like this one, when he closed his eyes he could see every detail.  The curve of her face, the softness of her chin, the set of her eyes.  Most often Richard saw her in the kitchen.  A simple space of old steel cupboards and Spartan furnishings.  The table top and vinyl covered chairs, red, contrasted the white tin cupboard doors and beige flooring. Most times he came home; she would be in that room.  It seemed the largest part of her universe.  No matter if she was cooking, cleaning or if the sewing machine could be heard clattering along, she would look up as Richard entered.  The smile said what words could never express.  He would speak of his day…never asking about hers.  Quietly she listened, her eyes gleaming as she patiently devoured his ramblings.  Richard could also see her, as toiling she coaxed a small space of earth to yield.  Yes, food, vegetables of all sorts, but also blooms large and small, flowers of yellow, red and purple. Nameless plants to him but strong images he could never forget.  A simple woman to others, but Richard knew better.  And though most might think that the many years that had parted, a severing complete, Richard understood.  The thread may have stretched, by distance and time, yet could never be fully broken.  No, when he closed his eyes he could see…hear…feel…his mother.

 

(244 Words)    5-6-2012

 

Lucky Alex

Lucky Alex

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Alex raced up the stairs to his room.  His mom had just brought the boy home from baseball practice, and he couldn’t wait.  He knew he was a luck guy, because of the robin’s nest outside his window.  Each day he would sit quietly and watch the birds so close at hand.  Just this morning he had witnessed the first baby as it escaped its powder blue prison, and hoped that in his absence the others had joined.  As Alex tiptoed across his floor and took his seat in the chair by the window, he did not notice that this toy trucks had been gathered from their scattered abandonments and placed carefully away.  While he looked awestruck at the nest’s new additions, his stuffed bear watched him from its place on the perfectly made bed.  The lad remained motionless as he considered the labor the nest’s construction had required.  He remembered how day by day mud and straw woven, a home for the babies’ birth and growth.  He smiled as he watched the mama Robin land upon the nest’s rim tilt her head, the young stretching upward with mouths open.  She stuffed her gift into a hungry mouth and flitted away. 

Time passed.  Alex did not notice the scent of homemade soup drift up the stairs and into his room. He watched as Mr. and Mrs. Robin came over and over again, feeding one, then another, their labor unending.  Transfixed, he did not consider the clean clothing that waited him in closet or drawer, and barely heard the call to dinner.  Moving away from his chair with care he headed down.  Yes, Alex was a lucky boy, perhaps one day he will know just how lucky…

(286 Words)                  5-5-2015

 

Rectangles in the Grass

Rectangles in the Grass                          

By John W. Vander Velden

I can still see the difference in the grass, for there is a part of the lawn where rectangles are visible even today.  You see, mom loved her garden, and at one time it took up a large portion of the side lawn.  Once a place where many kinds of food stuff – potatoes, cabbages, beans, corn, cucumbers, and so many other things grew, all in straight, though not necessarily parallel, rows.  Dad would rib her how the row spacing narrowed at the far end.  Mom did not always take those gibes with a smile.

Mom’s world had been different than what we know today.  Born across the sea, a child of nine, the harsh realities of the depression and maturing in an occupied country, shaped the woman she became.  She understood the “need”.  Her family would not go hungry.  Though the farm provided the milk and meat, she grew most of the rest.

But mom loved her garden.  Perhaps she understood it as something she did well.  Perhaps she never realized just how many things she did well.  So as she lived her life, wrapped up in the “each” day, the garden was a link – a link to her past – and her contribution to the future.  Everyone needs a link like that.

Yet her garden grew more than food, for each year rows of beauty could be found there as well.  Merry Golds, Cosmos, and Zinnias made up lines of color between the deep green of healthy plants.  Bouquets found their way into our home, but most often the beauty remained in the lines of contrast among the rows of beans and lettuce.

Mom took pride in her garden.  When family friends or neighbors stopped by, they admired the weed free space, where soil, sun, and water produced.  Few left without some offering of the hours, she had toiled the soil, for mom freely shared the bounty. 

The rectangles I see are in the first earth that was her own.  When the newlywed arrived in this country the soil she worked was on borrowed space.  Tenant housing on tenant farms, yet there had always been space sufficient for a garden.  The garden was the constant in all those very different places.  As was mother hunched between the rows with her hands moving among the plants, doing the work she loved.  Mom was forty-six when we arrived at this farm – their farm, and the ownership of the land fueled her gardening to an all-time high.  

But the garden was not the farm wife’s only duties.  Caring for the family, the endless cleaning our home, and a share of farm labor filled days un-numerable.  Yet she loved her flower beds and the garden, nurturing the plants while eliminating any stray unwanted vegetation that dared to intrude.  Each of us look for that something -- that something we can use to create – and mom’s favorite canvas was the soil.

Years passed, and with that passing, the always busy woman slowly became bent.  She fought each year dad required the garden surrender a bit, for a section on its east end would vanish returning to the yard it had been in the past.  A rectangle in the grass filled the space as the tilled world of my mother shrank.  Dad’s illness reminded him – daily – that there was a time for everything, and that the time and labor mom possessed was no longer infinite.  He understood mom could not, on her own free will, cut back her work load.

Little by little the garden shrank – one rectangle after another.  But the grass – the grass in each square, similar yet not identical, reminds of the past.  You see, from the farmhouse’s kitchen window, I can see those rectangles in the grass…

(625 Words)

Lavender

Lavender                         4-30-2013

By John W. Vander Velden

Mom loved her cactus.  One of the few things she brought with her to this country, as a bride, was a cutting of her mother’s cactus.  Carefully she nurtured it for more than ten years before it bloomed.  For fifty years she added others to her collection…You see mom loved cactus.

Life’s demands, years of hard work, decades of just doing without, had left their mark.  From those closest, she hid her frailty.  We saw only her strength.  But deep within, beneath her protective shell, remained a soft heart.  Perhaps that is way mom loved cactus…with their quills.  For she knew when at last they would bud, the blossoms would be breathtaking.  Cactus are more than they appear.

Among the latest addition to her cacti collection, a grand spiny succulent, which would at times show several large spectacular flowers, stood in the front window.  Unwilling to move the plant, she would admire the magnificence from the yard.  Times as many as six blossoms, each nearly as large as her hand faced the sun.  She took particular pride in that plant.  You see mom loved cactus.

During the terrible months of mom’s illness, that plant did not bloom.  However, on the day following her departure from that prison her body had become, when I alone walked the floors of what had been her home.  I saw the single grand flower…delicate…lavender.  Mom loved cactus…and it seemed the cactus loved her…

(242Words)