TeamAlzheimers.org - To Our Moms

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

On this Mother's Day, we thank God for mothers everywhere who push, prod, and prepare us to jump higher than our head, reach farther than our grasp, love wider than our years.

Thank you Mom for teaching me to do all this and more, I love you and miss you dearly...

As told by Linda Ching Sledge

As 15 women jogged up and down the recreation hall, the aerobics teacher twirled past and asked about the woman next to me.
“Who is that?”
“My mother,” I told her.
“Your what?” she whispered.
“My mother,” I repeated. “She’s visiting this week.”

And there she was-67 years old, 122 pounds, scarcely a trace of gray in her thick hair-kicking higher than anyone else in the second row.

My mother is full of surprises-taking up calisthenics after she retired from teaching is the least of these. Every time I think I know her, she’ll do or say something that shakes me down to my socks.

The first and only time I didn’t make the honor roll, she looked at my sad face and said, “If you think I love you only because you make good grades, you’re wrong.”

When I brought home a boy who ought to have been every mother’s dream-good-looking, rich, well-mannered-she smiled coolly and whispered, “Uh-uh. No imagination.”

She was the only one in my family who didn’t blanch at my studying for a Ph.D. “I always said you could do better than I,” she commented.

It’s because of her that I’m taking this aerobics class twice a week. Not that she told me to. But if she can dance, so (pant) can I.