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Remembering ?Great Mom? on My First Mother?s Day

By Eisa Ulen

One day when I was a girl, I discovered a bag of old family pictures in my grandmother?s closet. Years later, as a young adult, I arranged those photos in a large leather album.

Whenever I visited Grandmom in Philadelphia, I would pull out that leather album, and she would laugh. ?Aw, shucks,? she?d say, ?Eisa and those pictures!?

Though she teased me, she?d always lean forward, ask for her glasses, gaze at each old photograph, the images that documented her life, and tell me a story about each one. Sometimes, it would be a new story, one I?d never heard before, about the people in the photo, or the place where it was taken, or what else happened that day. Sometimes the story would be one I?d heard many times before. Either way, I never tired of looking at those old photos with Grandmom. Neither, I think, did she.

Last Spring, my grandmother passed. About a month later, my husband and I found out we were pregnant. This February, our son was born. So, this will be my first Mother?s Day, the first I celebrate since I had my son.The first without my grandmother.

And I miss her so much, I ache. Inside, I?m screaming. I want her back. I don?t want to hear she?s in A Better Place. I don?t to want to hear she is With Me in Spirit. I want her soft embrace, her quiet love.

I want to see her gently hold our son, her first great-grandchild. I want the picture of her holding him, to place in the big leather album. Because he?s already so much like her. My Love. What I would give for just one moment with them together, and to have it captured on film, an image to see whenever I wanted.

I do have two photographs sitting on my dresser. They are propped up against my vanity, among old perfume bottles, a long ribbon, and a brass box too tiny to hold anything inside. In one picture, a black and white, Grandmom holds my mother, a newborn infant yawning in her lap. My grandmother is turned to the side. Seated in front of her own vanity and dresser, she is well-dressed, and her post-pregnancy body looks amazing in her sharp, 1940s-style blouse and skirt. She is young and healthy and, oh, so beautiful, even in profile. Her thick dark hair hangs in heavy curls to her shoulders and is tucked behind her ear. She is loving motherhood. She is loving my mother, her firstborn child.

The other picture is one my husband took of me holding our newborn son, so handsome, even at just a couple of days old. Though I am turned to the side, it is clear I am unable to take my eyes off of this beautiful Life that has come through me to the world. My hair is thick and dark and hangs long, tucked behind my ear.

I did not think of my grandmother holding my mother when the picture of me was taken, but she and I look so much alike. To have had a picture of all of us, my grandmother, husband, son, and me in one picture would have been the greatest Mother?s Day gift.

As a gift to my son, I will whisper a story in his ear about Grandmom, who once told me she wanted to be called Great Mom when I had a baby. As a gift to her, I will lay flowers on her grave this Mother?s Day, and I will always carry her, inside me, where she will live on, an echo of Love with a rhythm that beats like the sound of my own heart.

I have not pulled out that old leather album to gaze at images of my family very much this past year. But on Mother?s Day, I will place a photo in it of all of us, my husband, son, and me, her descendants, together. It will be an image of the future, and in my husband?s love, in my face and my son?s-so much like hers-an image of Great Mom, continuing on. That will be my Mother?s Day gift to myself.

Eisa Ulen Richardson is the author of Crystelle Mourning.
www.EisaUlen.com