I see Mom standing behind the counter of the small hometown Mom-and-Pop store--The Eighth Street Dairy that she and Dad owned for a time. It was there she was happiest. There that she blossomed.
The glass on the door of the milk coolers gleam and shine, the countertops of the sit-down lunch bar is wiped clean and ready for whoever the day brings into the store. All of the potato chip racks are stacked with every flavor; the bread aisle stuffed with bright packaging, soft loaves and buns; the soda pop chills.
Mom greets the regulars and she knows not only their names but their stories because she always says that everyone has a story to tell. The lady over there has an abusive husband; the one over there is going through health issues. That mean schoolteacher is lonely and only acts tough as if trying to impress everyone. But Mom sees through the facade and she gives and she loves and she reaches and she touches more lives than she may ever know.
At the Dairy, Mom sips her steaming cup of coffee and chats with a best friend from childhood. They laugh about the handsome customer who just left the store and they giggle like school girls and are young again without a care in the world.
Then another young man walks in--the one Mom favors and loves. She treats him like family; she understands his home life and problems. She embraces him with her words and deeds and this man will never forget her.
She carefully counts out bags of penny candy: Swedish fish, flying saucers, gum balls, candy lipstick, licorice, and more. The hordes of children will soon come when their school day is over and she is ready with sacks of one hundred of each item. She thinks of them as hers, these kids; a little brood of young chicks and she is the hen of this little fold and she lovingly cares for them, smiles at them, and gives of her time.
Her face lights up when the love of her life walks through the door after his day of work. Dad greets her with a kiss and Mom tells him about her day; about the new people she's met and how everyone's story is unique.
Other young people come in to the dairy and they tell Mom secrets--things they would never tell another soul. She understands them though some are so rough-around-the-edges and beat down. She knows what that is like from her own childhood. She cries for the child inside each of them as she heals from her own battle scars. She teaches forgiveness to them. She lets go and shows them how to let go and they love her for it.
Mom worries over her little boy when she works at the store. She keeps an eye on him as he makes new friends and protects him best she can from what is bad in the world. She takes his friends into her little fold, and they spend hours, oh so many hours at her home and feel more like family than friends. She loves them and her circle grows wider and larger.
When the time comes for the little dairy to be sold, a piece of Mom goes with it. Yet as years progress, people come to her and say how much she helped mold them and change their lives. "If it wasn't for you," they say... She cries but they are happy tears but she is humble and does not let this change her simple, good heart. She's a soul with a body. A beautiful butterfly who has emerged from a cocoon of sadness into the light of a bright new day.
Later in life her mind begins to falter. Some of her memories are fading. But that one young man, the one she loved oh so much from her time at the Eighth Street Dairy remembers her. I have spoken to him and he tells me how much my mother meant to him. As I whisper his name to Mom, telling her I found him again, she smiles, sighs, and repeats his name to me. We would lose her two days later. She will take a small piece of all of those lives she touched with her where we cannot yet follow.
