Camilla

     Camilla, that name will always be special to me, because it is my mother's name. I woke up this morning and some words from a song were echoing in my mind. When you cried I wiped away all of your tears. As I write this tears come to my eyes. My Mom, I will go to see her today, but she probably won't remember who I am, but it's o.k. because I get to be with her, I can still hold her hand and hug her. Sometimes she does things like reach out and brush my hair back away from my face, there is a spark of memory.
     I remember so many things about her, most of my memories as a child consist of how she took care of me. All the times I was sick, she tended me. When I cried she did wipe away all of my tears.
The things she imparted to me went way beyond the care that she gave. When my father had a stroke and was in a wheelchair for 6 years, she faithfully cared for him, she showed me the true meaning of what in sickness and in health meant. She worked at a grocery store for years. She would buy lots and  lots of canned goods, my dad was a carpenter so that was good, he kept building my mother cupboards to put the canned goods in. If you knew my mother's childhood it would make sense. She grew up on an island with a single mother, my mother's father died when she was two, so her mother moved herself and her three children from Michigan to Maine where her own father lived. My mother would tell me stories of her childhood, they were very poor, they lived in a house where snow would actually get through the cracks of the wall in the winter. They didn't have alot of food when she was a child, so that was the reason my Mom was always buying food.
     She was our disciplinarian, but I think when she had the last child she was getting tired of that role, there were four of us, my sister, me, then my two brothers. A usual scene would be us riding in the back seat of the car, my brothers would be raising hell, my Mom would threaten to stop the car, with this threat would come the accompanying hand waving back and forth in the backseat, I assume she was attempting to whack one of my brothers to get the shenanigans to cease. We somehow mananged to make it to our destination without the car being stopped or anyone getting hit.
She was the perfect mate to my father. My Dad was completely taken with my mother, he thought she was gorgeous. He was always trying to kiss her and she would say, "not in front of the children." Somehow Dad always managed to get that kiss in, Mom was a modest person, sex was a taboo subject in our house, the understanding was you shouldn't do "it" before you're married, we just didn't know what "it" was.
     Mom always found out when you did something you weren't suppose to, my brother decided to have a party at the house on a school day, after all Dad and Mom were at work, who would be the wiser as long as he cleaned up the mess. sidenote: the high school is across the road. My brother had his party alright, the principal called my Mother at work, informed her of the goings on at the house, so she left work and came home to bust up the party. My brother's friends were jumping out of the windows, thank goodness we lived in a 1 story house,  the ground wasn't far below.
     My mother was many things to many people, a friend, a wife, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, to me she was the best mother in the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mTz1MR3soA