Thinking about my mom, and her upcoming adventure....

I fell asleep last night thinking of my mom....

thinking about her life, how motivated she is, how creative, how brave.

I thought about how when I was growing up our family didn't have a lot of money. And to help make ends meet and bring in some extra money for school clothes and new shoes mom would make crafts to sell. Our kitchen was full of her creations. In the corner of our kitchen behind our table she had a tall narrow cupboard that she kept some of her supplies in. Under the carpeted bench seat at our kitchen table were baskets full of more supplies. In the chest in front of her bed she stored fabric. She made dolls. Stuffed dolls with yarn for hair and tea stained clothes to give them an antique feel. Some of them had angel wings on the backs.

She still has some on her bed in her house in North Carolina.

My mom loved to sew and was good at it. She taught us all to sew as well, though I'm sadly not very good. She made all of our baby blankets which I still have and I also still have many of dresses that she made for me as a little girl.

As we grew a bit older my mom didn't sew as much and eventually took a job working at McDonald's when I was in grade school. I have great memories going to McDonald's at night after all my evening after school activities of volleyball, basketball, and cheering games. And just standing around the counter, eating ice cream cones, talking with all the employees that I knew and loved who worked with my mom.

She worked the evening shift so that my dad could be home with us when she went to work. She worked to help bring in extra money. I have a lot of great memories from that time.

When my mom was in her 30's she started taking Tae Kwan Do lessons. The fact that she was taking lessons alongside kids didn't stop her and eventually through the years she earned her 2nd degree black belt. My little 4'11'' mom, a black belt in Tae Kwan Do. At one of her tests I saw her punch through five or six boards with her bare fist. She was so hard core, my mom.

I remember growing up my mom teaching Sunday school at our little church, Faith Center. She was very active in our church, friends with everyone. Our church used to have these Follies nights every year or so, and my mom would get together with all these other moms and put on these hilarious performances. One time they dressed up as biker chics and rode around on Little Tykes three wheelers peddling around the stage to the song "Leader of the Pact". She always performed in our churches grand theatrical community outreach performances of Scrooge each year, and of course, we were expected to participate in the play as well, donning old fashioned clothes with bright rosy cheeks singing songs and dancing across the stage.

When I was around thirteen or fourteen years old my mom opened up her own restaurant called Landlubbers in the little tourist city of Frankenmuth, MI. It was a sub and sandwich restaurant with a variety of other fried items available to order and with a full ice cream counter that had an old fashioned cash register. She opened it up all on her own, and truth be known, I still have no idea all that she went through to see it through. My parents were already divorced at that time. And she did it all by herself, while raising me and my brothers on her own. Every weekend me and my brothers would drive with my mom (or just with Joel as he had his license then) to Frankenmuth which was about 40 minutes away from where we lived in Bay City, and we would work together at the shop. We'd put in full days behind the counter cooking meat at the stove, arranging subs, deep frying calamari, refilling drinks, taking orders, mopping floors, restocking supplies. Jordan was only around eleven at the time so he was put in charge of the ice cream counter and made ice cream cones, shakes, and sundaes all day long. That was my first job, well, if you don't count all the babysitting I did before that. My mom paid us all a wage and I loved having extra money, but really I loved that restaurant. It was ours. Mostly it was my moms, but we worked there together and it was ours and I was very proud to work there, even when it was exhausting and imposed on my social life.

Eventually mom sold the restaurant when she decided to move back to Georgia to be closer to her family.

I didn't appreciate it at the time, the strength that it took her to leave everything behind, to close her beloved restaurant, and start over again down South all alone with us kids. But she did it. We all started over, even though it was painstakingly hard. Being caught up in my own world of high school and adolescent drama, I didn't realize until some years later that my mom had taken a job as a dishwasher for $5.15 an hour when we moved there until she eventually got hired at better paying jobs.

My mom, did what she had to do. Moved where she had to move. She worked where she had to work. Even when there was no glory, no appreciation, no one to lift the burden from her, no immediate reward beyond having enough food for the week. She kept pushing forward, determined.

She was also finally able to go back to school very slowly and starting working towards her bachelor's degree that she put on hold while we were younger. In 2005, when she was 53, she finally received her BA diploma, and over the last many years she has gone on to earn a double Master's degree, and is currently on the way to finishing her Doctorate, in her 60's.

Of course there is so much more, enough to fill a book perhaps. And it was these memories I was replaying, as I lay in bed, just thinking about my mom, and I'm just in awe. When I look at my mom, I see a very inspiring lady. My mom may not have a crowning set of flashy achievements that would impress others, but to me, she is one of the bravest people I know. She's never let age stop her from doing anything. She's never let her circumstances dictate her life's outcome. She's never been afraid to try new things, and if she has been afraid, she didn't let it stop her. I have a very brave and determined mom. She is motivated and hard working. And I very much admire her. And I pray that I am a fraction of the person that she is someday.  

And now she is coming to Africa when she said she never would. My mom....is coming to Burkina Faso. She is getting on a plane in March and flying out of North America for the first time in her life and coming to Burkina Faso of all places too see us and study the education system here for her dissertation. That is no small feat, let me tell ya. Here she is again, doing something brave and new and drastically different from anything she's ever done before, and that is not lost on me, and I am one proud daughter at her willingness to come out here and embrace something so different. 

And we are counting down the days until we see her!! Everything has begun to revolve around when my mom, the Mimi, is coming. Every time we talk about something it is in relation to when mom will be here. We are very enthusiastically awaiting her arrival. I have big plans to show her off, and show her the new country we are currently calling home, and have her meet her hopeful new grandson, and go for walks, and watch movies, and play and live life with her here in the new context of living we have adopted and getting to share in that with her.

And, I am very excited to see what God has in store for her here, or back at home as a result of this trip. Because if life has taught me anything....it's that my mom is capable of anything. =)

Let the countdown begin....35 days till she leaves to come here!!