These days I've contemplated, with some disbelief, the fact that my mom is turning eighty years old! I don't quite know why I find this hard to believe. Maybe it's an awareness of the brevity of life and how her aging affects all of us. Maybe it's just coming to grips with the fact that the one who has been the most constant source of love and encouragement throughout my life is not going to be young forever.
People who look at my mom with her beautiful smile and ever willing heart to make things better, would never guess that life has not always been easy for her. In fact, I would venture to say that part of who she is, is due to not having a perfect life.
Mom was born December 18, 1934 in a small village in Paraguay. Her parents had come from Russia as young people, just four years earlier, with a group of refugees who pioneered the harsh conditions of the Chaco with the help of MCC.
She graduated from sixth grade with honors and no opportunity to continue her schooling. Her dad died when she was thirteen, due to complications from a well digging accident. (Photo above is their last family photo with their dad.) Being the eldest in the family, she continued her domestic training at home.
In her later teen years she went to work in the big city of Asuncion, first as a nanny and later on in a hotel. Then, as a young adult, she heard about an opportunity to work for MCC in Uruguay.
This is where she met and married my dad.
Three kids later, they moved to Brasil for just a few years and then on to Canada.
Mom worked hard to help get established once more. For a time, she worked in a plastic factory in Vancouver. But throughout her full time work, she kept the household running. We always had homemade meals and lunches packed. She loved singing in the church choir, serving in the kitchen and packing parcels for needy people in South America. Mom and dad had lots of good friends who were like uncles and aunts to us. Their best friends were Abe and Katie, whom they got together with almost every Friday night, giving us kids a chance to play to our hearts' content as well. On Saturdays, she baked buns and cooked a large pot of soup, just so she could invite someone for lunch after church on Sunday. The first time I remember going out to eat with my family was for my Grade 12 graduation!
Mom became a very happy Oma at the age of forty four and loved every grandchild that followed, building into their lives as best she could. I have to say, so much about being a mom and now a grandmother, I learned from her.
Mom's life, as she knew it, came to sudden realization of a change when dad had his first of many disabling strokes before he was yet sixty years old. His sudden disability to work and function as he was used to were understandably hard on both of them. Five years later he had a stroke that paralyzed his left side and she became his constant caregiver. When he moved into a home at the age of sixty seven, she visited him almost daily (with a treat) until he passed away at the age of seventy four. During these years mom had numerous eye surgeries partly due to a genetic eye disease. Follow up trips to see specialists gave us many hours in the car to talk, which made the time go easier.
In 2011 she married her best friend's widowed husband, Abe who has been loved by all of us for a long time. She boasts of having sixteen great-grandchildren plus his, but that number changes so quickly that I'm sure she won't be able to keep up much longer.
As certain things in life become confusing and simple facts fade in her memory, I yearn to reach for time to stand still . . . to beg it not to rob this beautiful mind of what is there. And yet I know I have a treasure that cannot be taken . . . the gift of a mom has been extended to me many times over and what I've received cannot be taken away. Today I celebrate her 80 years and know that, as I grow older along with her, God will continue to give grace for each and every day.
